This report describes a new map-based approach to defining areas best suited for NTFP commercialization. Uganda is used as a case study. As one of the most rapidly growing economies in Africa, its rich natural heritage highlights the conflict between national development efforts and the need for a globally responsible approach to biodiversity conservation.

Wildlife watching is fast becoming a multi-million dollar industry with the potential to fight poverty by pumping vital income into local communities and conservation initiatives. The report commissioned by the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (UNEP/CMS) and produced in collaboration with the tourism group TUI, focuses on 12 case studies to highlight the growing economic importance of wildlife watching while flagging some of the pitfalls that may arise through poor or insensitive management.

Bringing in multiple perspectives, especially those that usually remain invisible, is a universal challenge to policy processes today. India undertook an ambitious participatory process to prepare a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) under the requirements of the Convention on Biological Diversity – with the extra challenge of integrating opinions over a vast national scale.

This study used an innovative approach to map potential current distributions of nearly 400 individual bamboo species that occur naturally within the remaining forests of Africa, Madagascar and the Americas.

The purpose of the World Atlas of Seagrasses is to present a global synthesis of the distribution and status of seagrasses. Such synthesis are available for other coastal ecosystems and have been instrumental in creating awareness, driving clearer conservation and management efforts and focusing priorities at the international level. It is our hope that the World Atlas of Seagrasses will contribute to the more widespread recognition, understanding, and protection of seagrass ecosytems worldwide.

World Resources 2002-2004 examines how we make environmental decisions and who makes them, which is the process of environmental goverance.

Can trade controls and the resulting changes in the wildlife trade have a negative impact on the livelihoods of those who earn an income from wildlife harvests, and specifically the rural poor? Some argue that not only do such controls reduce actual or potential economic benefits from wildlife products, but they also have little positive and sometimes even a negative impact on conservation.

The report focuses on the development of national policy to implement the third objective of the Convention on Biodiversity, which requires the benefits from the commercial and scientific use of genetic resources to be shared fairly and equitably.