Official IUCN publications

Human wellbeing depends on the capacity of the earth’s natural systems to provide ecosystem goods and services. However, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment chillingly concludes that unless we take action to mitigate the current decline in ecosystem services, the cost to society will be substantial. In this publication, IUCN defines three key challenges that will need to be addressed in the near future in order to deliver internationally-agreed development goals.

An environmental flow is the water regime provided within a river, wetland or coastal zone to maintain ecosystems and their benefits where there are competing water uses and where flows are regulated. Pioneering efforts in South Africa, Australia and the United States have shown that the process to establish them poses great challenges.

Despite endorsements of the concept of sustainable development and the linking of sustainable development with the Millennium Development Goals, progress towards the eradication of poverty has been disappointing. The underlying principles of sustainable development need to be more critically and actively applied to both poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation.

The Vth IUCN World Parks Congress was the largest gathering of protected area experts. In September 2003, some 3,000 participants met in Durban, South Africa for 10 days of reflection, discussion, debate and networking to consider the state of the world's protected areas, the challenges they face and the opportunities that lie ahead. Are included the reports on the plenary sessions, symposia and workshop, as well as the main outputs from the event.

The traditional patterns of land use that have created many of the world’s cultural landscapes contribute to biodiversity, support ecological processes, provide important environmental services, and have proven sustainable over the centuries. Protected landscapes can serve as living models of sustainable use of land and resources, and offer important lessons for sustainable development.

The population of western gray whales numbers only about 100 animals and is classified on IUCN's Red List as "critically endangered".

With more than 70 individual sites, nationally and internationally designated, in the Western Indian Ocean, there is a growing need to ensure and improve the management effectiveness of the marine protected areas. This toolkit aims to act as a first point of call in the search for information on issues that MPA managers and practitioners face in day-to-day operations.