The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
While species losses mount worldwide, conservationists in Brazil have made great strides towards saving the golden lion tamarin and its forest habitat from destruction.
Urban biodiversity and the associated ecosystem services have been ignored and undervalued because ecologists have focused only on pristine habitats and rare species. However, with rapid urbanisation the challenge is to build the native biodiversity within the urban landscape. This could be done by involving multiple stakeholders like the local …
This booklet provides a range of case studies and other materials to make the forest sector more biodiversity-friendly, and socially beneficial. The guide: introduces public decision-makers to some techniques, technologies and procedures that optimize the social and environmental contributions of forestry and minimize negative impacts; presents good practice examples on …
The Secretariat of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands has announced that its Scientific and Technical Review Panel (STRP) has compiled a briefing note based on recent decisions adopted by Ramsar contracting parties and on recent information and recommendations provided by the STRP in relation to wetlands and climate change. The …
Policy-makers who factor the planet's multi-trillion dollar ecosystem services into their national and international investment strategies are likely to see far higher rates of return and stronger economic growth in the 21st century. Some countries have already made the link to a limited extent and are glimpsing benefits in terms …
The United Nations climate treaty may soon include a mechanism for compensating tropical nations that succeed in reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, source of nearly one fifth of global carbon emissions. We review the potential for this mechanism [reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD)] to provoke …
Upland watersheds in the tropics provide a range of crucial ecosystem goods and services. How they are governed can be crucial to human well-being and environmental sustainability. Communities, governments and firms have taken many different approaches to sharing these benefits, negotiating trade-offs between them, and allocating the risks and burdens …
Forests provide wide range of ecosystem services and thereby help communities to derive many direct and indirect benefits. Forest watershed services of absorbing rain water and releasing it slowly, allowing it to seep into the soil preventing run-off with sediments helps communities downstream to maximise the benefits from crop cultivation. …
This book illustrates the application of bio-cultural community protocols to a range of environmental legal frameworks. Part I focuses on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and access and benefit-sharing. Part II looks at other frameworks to which bio-cultural protocols can be applied by indigenous and local communities, including REDD, …
As Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BES) decline, this is increasingly translating to business risk and opportunity linked to reputational risk, security of supply and legal compliance. Survey of 31 companies in the food, beverage and tobacco sectors painted a picture of early stage response, of pilot projects, developing but incompletely …
A tool for investors to assess the management of biodiversity and ecosystem services risks and opportunities in companies with an agricultural supply chain. This document describes the Ecosystem Services Benchmark (ESB), drawing examples from its pilot study with six investors and a selection of 31 companies within their portfolios. This …
Two formidable challenges seem to overarch agriculture and food production in this century: how to end hunger and how to keep global warming at a level that will allow humanity and the agroecosystems we depend upon to adapt in a noncatastrophic way. Two outstanding paradoxes mark these challenges: Modern agriculture …
Benefits to people from water ecosystems like rivers, swamps, floodplains and groundwater systems are central to human well-being. But ecosystems are in trouble and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have each shown that freshwater ecosystem services …
The purpose of the publication is to provide biodiversity-relevant information to the UNFCCC. Main messages focus on: the impacts of climate change on biodiversity; the role of biodiversity in climate change adaptation; the links between biodiversity conservation and sustainable use and climate change mitigation; and ways and means to value …
This report calls for Asia's first regional climate change adaptation agreement in the Greater Mekong region, which, as one of the regions with richest biological diversity on the earth, is already strongly affected by climate change. It urges politicians to strike an ambitious and fair agreement on a climate treaty …
This publication intends to provide guidance on the benefits of, and ways to integrate environmental concerns into disaster risk reduction strategies (DRR) at the local and national levels. The questions this guidance note answers are: What are healthy ecosystems and ecosystem management? How can we integrate these environmental considerations into …
