Official IUCN publications

This handbook illustrates concepts, methods and tools for "primary environmental care", an approach that seeks to empower communities to meet basic needs while protecting the environment. In particular, it focuses on how population size, structure, growth (or decline) and movements relate to the quality of the environment and the quality of life. Emphasis is placed on a community-led process of participatory action research in which local knowledge and skills are fully utilized.

A system plan is the design of a total reserve system covering the full range of ecosystems and communities found in a particular country, identifying the range of purposes of protected areas and the relationships among the system components (i.e. individual areas, protected areas and other land uses), and different sectors and levels of society.

The text provides an overview of environmental communication and education practice and lessons from Asian governments, NGOs and the media. Drawing from papers presented at the IUCN, Unesco, UNEP organised workshop for Asian environment ministries and partners held in 1996, the text provides examples of government communications strategies, government interaction with NGOs, strategies for orienting formal education to environment, and NGO programmes

This new edition reveals a global network of over 30,000 protected areas designated under national legislation which covers 13.2 million square kilometres of land, freshwater and sea, an area larger than Canada, and accounts for nearly 8 per cent of the world's land area, as well as 1.5 million square kilometres of sea.

The primary goal is to highlight some of the principles which should be considered by planners, legislative drafters and policy-makers as they work to develop legal frameworks on access to genetic resources in their countries. Contextual information on the Convention on Biological Diversity and examples of how countries have approached the issue to date are provided

This represents the most comprehensive compilation of data on threatened vascular plants ever published. It includes the names of some 33,000 plant species determined to be rare or threatened on a global scale. Conservation assessments were provided by the IUCN Species Survival Commission, the National Botanical Institute (South Africa), Environment Australia and CSIRO,.