A new tool was recently unveiled at the 11th Conference of Parties – Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-CBD) in India. It will help countries meet their existing obligations regarding development, poverty eradication and maintenance of biodiversity.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has long emphasized the need for integrating or 'mainstreaming' biodiversity into national and local development and poverty reduction strategies. National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans 2.0 (NBSAPs) is a three-year project intended to support the revision of NBSAPs, as requested at the 10th COP-CBD conference in Nagoya. It has resulted in a diagnostic tool called "Biodiversity Mainstreaming – Integrating biodiversity, development and poverty reduction", which was recently launched at COP 11 in the Indian city Hyderabad. The tool enables policymakers to assess their countries’ progress in the integration of biodiversity and development, and identify barriers to progress.

A new global assessment shows that impacts of actions under Reduction of Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) on biodiversity and carbon vary across forest types and landscape conditions.

Deforestation (e.g. by converting forests to agriculture) is one of the major sources of carbon dioxide emissions and a major cause of global biodiversity loss on Earth. The UN initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in developing countries (REDD+) seeks cations to reduce deforestation including conservation and sustainable management of forests. It aims to bring positive impacts for both biodiversity and carbon on a global scale.

Key findings of the preliminary assessment were released at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Hyderabad, India. The assessment has been prepared by the International Union of Forest Research Organisations' Global Forest Experts Panel (GFEP) and, with input of more than 50 leading scientists from around the world, will constitute the first comprehensive analysis to date of the relationship between biodiversity, forest management and REDD+.

“I commend this study to policy-makers, planners and all who have a stake in creating ecologically sustainable urbanization for the benefit of humanity and the planet.” These are the words from Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, in a foreword of a new report entitled the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook (CBO).

The report highlights the role of cities in conserving biodiversity and providing opportunities for making the transition to an inclusive green economy in both the developing and developed world. The topic of the report is definitely relevant considering that, if current trends continue, by 2050 the global urban population is estimated to be 6.3 billion, nearly doubling the 3.5 billion urban dwellers worldwide in 2010.

Critical to people's health and well-being

The new report emphasises not only the unexpected wealth of urban biodiversity but also its role in generating crucial ecosystem services upon which large and small urban populations and communities rely for their food, water, and health. As such the report makes a strong argument for greater attention to be paid by urban planners and managers to the natural capital assets within their cities as one way toward realizing a range of targets related to sustainable development.

"Cities need to learn how to better protect and enhance biodiversity, because rich biodiversity can exist in cities and is extremely critical to people's health and well-being," explains Professor Thomas Elmqvist from the Stockholm Resilience Centre and scientific editor of the CBO.

The former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, has recently released a book entitled "We Let Them Starve: The Mass Destruction in The Third World". Unsurprisingly this has kicked up a real storm. From an interview with newsnet (the online presence of Swiss newspapers Basler Zeitung), although the tendency for collective accusation is worrisome, he brings up some of the complex issues (apart from global food production) that are at the heart of global starvation and chronic undernutrition - food speculation, national dept repayments and consumer behavior.

I haven't read the book yet, but its sailed right up on my must-read list.

A while back we blogged about a study by Phalan et al, that took a stab at trying to answer which of two contrasting strategies seems best to meet rising food demand while causing the least damage to biodiversity. The two alternatives that were evaluated in that study were land sharing (low-intensive agriculture and biodiversity conservation are conducted on the same land) and land sparing (intensive agriculture is carried out separately from lands conserved to protect biodiversity). Phalan et al came to the conclusion that "land sparing is a more promising strategy for minimizing negative impacts of food production, at both current and anticipated future levels of production".

This is a debate that's not going to die in a long while. It is often claimed (UN, FAO etc), that there is a need for 70–100% more food to feed the Earth's growing population. At the same time the UN declared the current decade (2011–2020) as the ‘Decade of Biodiversity’ with the EU setting the targets of halting the loss of biodiversity and degradation ecosystem services as major goals and setting 2020 as the target for restoring at least 15% of degraded ecosystems. But if agriculture is a major driver of biodiversity loss, then we clearly need to find strategies that can reconcile these "conflicting" goals.

Promoting a human rights approach to S&T advances will reinforce moves towards inclusive development. But implementation challenges remain. This is the focus of a great special feature on SciDev.net on human rights, science and development.

While there is a growing acceptance that enjoying the fruits of scientific knowledge is a basic human right, there are still gaps in how this right can be implemented in the context of social and economic development. Any serious attempts to transform our society, from the local to the global scales, towards sustainable ecological and social development needs to take human rights into account. This point needs to be hammered home, especially in light of the newly launched process of replacing the Millennium Development Goal with a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.

“Why bother with Max Weber?”

An invitation to classic sociology

Some time during my first weeks at the Stockholm Resilience Centre I was making photocopies of a book called “The pattern of the past. Can we determine it” written in 1949 by Pieter Geyl. The book was a first hard copy edition dug up from the Stockholm University library depository, and looked ancient. While I was busy my colleague Per Olsson came in, saw what I was doing, smiled and remarked: “You social scientists still read the old stuff!”.

It can indeed be remarkable for natural scientists to see that social scientists still read and refer to literature that is 100 or more years old. These ‘classics’, as they are called, typically include the work of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, but also smaller giants like, for example, Alexis de Tocqueville, Herbert Mead or Georg Simmel. To my mind the only really old work that natural scientists occasionally refer to is “The Origins of Species”. Per didn’t ask me then, but must have been thinking – is reading old stuff really worth the effort? I mean these books are obscure, incomprehensible and thick. Not exactly favorite bedtime reading….

This year is the year of the Olympic Games. There is also an Olympics for nature. Every fourth year IUCN organise a world meeting. This year it is held in Jeju, Korea. For ten days important agreements and new initiatives will be put forward to improve how way manage nature. More than 4000 people were present at the official opening ceremony of IUCN’s Congress representing 175 countries. Stockholm Resilience Centre is present at the congress and will organise a session on Planetary Boundaries on Monday 10 Sep in room 303 at the conference center. Please visit: http://portals.iucn.org/2012forum/?q=1448