This report provides an outline of protected areas and biodiversity in the Lower Mekong Basin. The analysis contains an overview of threats to protected areas from climate change, as well as non-climate threats such as land concessions, infrastructure development, illegal activities, and agriculture.

We review Miami-Dade County's Environmentally Endangered Lands (EEL) Covenant Program as a means to create protected areas on private property via financial incentives. Such incentives go a step beyond regulatory and fee simple approaches to conservation. The program is codified under Chapter 25B, Article II, of the Miami-Dade County Code as authorized by section 193.501, Florida Statutes.

Protected areas are regarded as the most important tool in the conservation toolbox. They cover > 12% of the Earth's terrestrial area, with over half of this designated since 1970, and are thus a unique example of governments and other stakeholders consciously changing management of land and water at a significant scale. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has a global programme to complete ecologically-representative protected area networks, and this is driving the creation of large numbers of new protected areas.

La presente Ley de Armonización y Simplificación en materia de Protección del Territorio y de los Recursos Naturales, tiene como finalidad incidir sobre la arquitectura del sistema territorial y medioambiental con el fin de eliminar rigideces innecesarias y clarificar las competencias que corresponden a los tres niveles administrativos (el del Gobierno de Canarias, el de los cabildos y el de los ayuntamientos), además de agilizar al máximo los procedimientos de formulación y aprobación de los instrumentos de planeamiento territorial, ambiental y urbanístico.Además, se propone revisar la nor

This Government Regulation implements the provisions of Law No. 41 of 1999 on Forestry. It establishes that to accelerate the development excluding the activity of forestry, it simplifies the procedure of changing the designation and function of forest areas and solves the problems that cannot be resolved under the provisions of Government Regulation No. 10 of 2010 on Procedure to Change the Designation and Function of Forest Areas.

If you cannot view, click here.Guest commentary by Christopher Seeley, Chief of Party of the USAID Honduras ProParque project.
One of the most vexing challenges in biodiversity conservation in developing countries is reconciling land tenure and land use issues that emerge when previously unprotected or unregulated ecosystems are placed under state control as part of a national protected areas system.

The Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD) defines biodiversity as the variability among living
organisms from all sources including, inter alia,
terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the
ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes
diversity within species, between species, and of
ecosystems. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and TEEB
(The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) demonstrated

This paper provides a simple, yet
robust, methodology for comparing proposed hydroelectric
project sites in terms of their expected negative
environmental impacts, and relating these to power
generation benefits. The paper also summarizes the
environmental mitigation options for large dams. If properly
implemented, these mitigation measures can effectively
prevent, minimize, or compensate for many (though not all)

India's environmental problems
are deep-rooted and severe. Estimates of annual
environmental damage range from 4.5 percent to 8 percent of
gross domestic product (GDP), in line with annual economic
growth. Since 1990 the World Bank has lent India 1.94
billion dollars for 19 projects to mitigate environmental
damage and another 97 million dollars was granted under
global environmental facility (GEF) and Montreal protocol

The urban and the rural are increasingly interconnected. Rural areas have become places of consumption, as leisure and recreation have become important functions of rural areas. There are also indications that increased urbanisation even leads to a stronger appreciation of green areas situated far beyond city limits. Rural areas with their highly valued natural amenities nowadays seem increasingly to host urban wellbeing, given the positive relation found between green areas and human wellbeing.

Anthropogenic land use will likely present a greater challenge to biodiversity than climate change this century in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Even if species are equipped with the adaptive capacity to migrate in the face of a changing climate, they will likely encounter a human-dominated landscape as a major dispersal obstacle. Our goal was to identify, at the ecoregion-level, protected areas in close proximity to lands with a higher likelihood of future land-use conversion.