Barbara Kiser's blog

Is the biodiversity drain speeding up? As Juliette Jowit reports in a recent Guardian, a study by Simon Stuart of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Species Survival Commission reveals that humans are driving extinctions ‘faster than new species can evolve’.

That might not surprise some in Madagascar — the California-sized ‘eighth continent’ off Africa’s southeastern coast, and a crucible of species from lemurs to octopus trees. This positively sizzling biodiversity hotspot is in danger of becoming little more than a barren political minefield.

All of which strikes a bleak note in this, the International Year of Biodiversity.

A vast blue box dropped onto a tabletop: this is the Koncerthuset, where IIED’s Development and Climate Days came to a close yesterday.

Day 4 of Development and Climate Days: Mitigation, Finance and the Private Sector

Thousands of people make up a COP, from campaigners, lobbyists, negotiators and journalists to NGO and UN staff, presidents and ministers.

Day 3 of Development and Climate Days: Planning Adaptation

Day 2 of Development and Climate Days: Justice, Ethics and Humanitarian Issues
 

Day 1 of IIED’s Development and Climate Days: Land, Water and Forests

Arriving at any big event in midflow is always disorienting: the play has begun and you’ve come in right after the interval.