South Africa

Privately protected areas deserve far greater recognition and support than is the case at the moment. Private conservation efforts can often fill important gaps in national policies in terms of both geographic cover and speed of response to conservation challenges, yet they remain a hidden resource: ignored by governments, omitted from international conservation reporting mechanisms and left out of regional conservation strategies.

As our cities continue to grow, we should defend the protection of natural areas and even try to create new space for nature within this urban fabric. This volume explains the context and concept of urban protected areas, profiles urban protected areas in 15 metropolitan areas around the world, and offers best practice guidelines.

‘Inclusive business models’ have attracted renewed interest in recent years, as part of wider debates about growing agricultural investment in developing countries. This report discusses joint ventures in South Africa’s agricultural sector. The South African experience features major specificities linked to the country’s history and recent land reform programme. Land reform beneficiaries entered into a range of joint ventures with commercial partners.

This book is a practical manual on how to develop and manage tourism in protected areas. It is for all those responsible for the management of protected areas as tourism destinations. These include not only protected-area managers but also local authorities, tourism promotion agencies and tourism business associations. It focuses on protected areas that are in an early stage of their tourism development and wish to do this in a well-planned and sustainable manner.

This publication is an excerpt of the report, "Decoupling natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth : a report of the working group on decoupling to the International Resource Panel".

This report provides a solid foundation for the concept of decoupling, clearly defining key terms and providing empirical evidence of escalating resource use. It shows that decoupling is already taking place to some extent, but is lagging far behind its potential. The scenarios show that we are facing a historic choice about how we use resources and the report scopes the potential of innovation, rethinking economic growth and the role of cities in building more resource efficient economies.

Written by a team of independent experts who are each covering the country or region from which they hail, the UNESCO Science Report 2010 analyses the trends and developments that have shaped scientific research, innovation and higher education over the past five years. The report depicts an increasingly competitive environment, one in which the flow of information, knowledge, personnel and investment has become a two-way traffic.

While some argue that trade liberalization has raised incomes and led to environmental protection in developing countries, others claim that it generates neither poverty reduction nor sustainability. The detailed case studies in this book demonstrate that neither interpretation is correct, given how much depends on specific policies and institutions that determine ‘on-the-ground’ outcomes.