Biodiversity blogs

Botswana: Biodiversity and dragons come together

Dilys Roe
22 May 2013
With the Day for Biological Diversity on 22 May, a new biodiversity project highlights its importance and draws out tensions that arise when biodiversity is put at the centre of development policies.

How communities are protecting their biocultural resources with community protocols

Krystyna Swiderska
2 October 2012
As delegates gather for the 11th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity this photostory looks at why two communities in India and Borneo have developed community protocols.

World Conservation Congress: key themes and a new leader to watch

Camilla Toulmin
17 September 2012
The role of markets and the green economy, and the risks of monetising nature were two key themes that emerged from the Conference.

IUCN World Conservation Congress begins

Camilla Toulmin
6 September 2012
At the start of the World Conservation Congress in Jeju, South Korea, IIED’s Director Camilla Toulmin, reflects on the controversies and challenges that it faces.

Making the Nagoya Protocol work at the community level

Krystyna Swiderska
4 July 2012
Two safeguards for communities' rights to resources can help implement the Nagoya Protocol.

Community protocols can bring real benefits to communities and combat biodiversity loss

Krystyna Swiderska
15 March 2012

Indigenous people and local communities have received few benefits from the commercial use of the wealth of traditional crops and medicinal knowledge they have developed.

Rafts of rubber and a hotel for birds with spit that sells

Mike Shanahan
21 February 2012
There’s plenty of room at the Hotel Sri Tahjung. Any time of year… you can find it here. But if you want to stay, you’ll need a pair of wings and plenty of saliva.

Patently obvious: intellectual property rights could support small producers

Emma Blackmore
14 November 2011

The humble potato is a great example of how Quechua communities in the Andes have maintained crop biodiversity.

Ask not what you can do for nature…ask what it can do for you

Mike Shanahan
1 August 2011

In 1997 a British barrister uttered three words that left my sister and me speechless and gave us a glimpse of the future.

“Protecting and promoting the rights of indigenous people benefits us all”

Krystyna Swiderska
9 June 2011

These were Ban Ki-moon’s words at the opening of the annual meeting of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) in New York, 16th May 2011. He gave the example of indigenous peoples in Peru who are responding to climate change by reintroducing native potato varieties and so are “helping to conserve the earth’s biodiversity”. “Indigenous peoples have been living a ‘green economy’ for centuries,” he added — economists should look to old practices in indigenous communities for new ways to achieve sustainable development.

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