With world heads of state gathered in New York to discuss the status of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), climate change and ecosystem destruction brings added pressure to the fight to end extreme poverty.
Ecosystems provide a wealth of services to human populations, among them, disease regulation. But narrowly-focused development projects can threaten these ecosystems and put entire populations at risk.
Unfair government policies fail to benefit poor people who live in the forests of many developing countries. Those same policies fail even to protect forests, according to a new study.
Man-made flood-control systems—such as levees, upstream dams, and canals—continue to be responsible for widespread damage to the New Orleans and Louisiana landscapes.
Janet Ranganathan, Karen Bennett, Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, Nicolas Lucas, Frances Irwin, Monika Zurek, Neville Ash and Paul West
March, 2008
Presents various methods that use ecosystem services—the benefits of nature such as food, fuel, natural hazard protection, pollination, and spiritual sustenance—to enable decision makers to link ecosystems and economic development.
Clarifies the relationship between adaptation and development by analyzing 135 projects, policies, and other initiatives from the developing world that have been labeled by implementers or researchers as “adaptation to climate change.”
WRI’s SDPAMs initiative aims to find ways to help major developing countries find policies and measures that meet their own sustainable development goals more effectively, while creating significant benefits for the global climate.
Brings together an extensive body of experimental and epidemiological research from around the world documenting the effects of widely used pesticides on the immune system and the attendant health risks.
World Resources Institute, IUCN-The World Conservation Union, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in consultation with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
February, 1992
Offers the most systematic and comprehensive plan ever devised to protect the world’s total stock of genes, species, and ecosystems.