Ecotourism

Protecting forests from illegal logging and helping them to flourish is of paramount importance in the fight against climate change.  But of equal importance is ensuring that systems of forest management are helping to pull those dependent on forests out of poverty. 

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.