Biodiversity blogs

Are "alternative livelihoods" projects effective?

Considerable sums have been spent on projects designed to provide people with alternative ways to make a living in and around protected or biodiverse areas. But do such projects work?

Great apes: Their fate is ours

We need new people, new tools and new ideas to ensure a future for great apes – that was the key message from the 2013 Great Apes Summit.

Maps reveal what motivates people to take resources from flagship national park

A project that maps people's unauthorised use of resources in a national park provides important insights into the links between poverty and conservation.

Traditional innovation in farming is under threat

Indigenous knowledge is innovative, not static. Protecting it will help food security.

Uganda: Can a gorilla park deliver more benefits to local people?

A project aims to help poorer members of the community receive more benefits from a national gorilla park in Uganda through research and by advocating for change with national and local authorities.

Botswana: Biodiversity and dragons come together

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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”

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.

Can hunting wildlife contribute to biodiversity conservation?

It’s a politically and ethically charged debate. Can hunting animals really contribute to wildlife conservation and biodiversity objectives?

Charting a course for biodiversity and the poor

Negotiations by parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) continue in Nagoya, Japan. Biodiversity researchers, advocates and government officials have gathered here to strike a deal that will, hopefully, safeguard life on Earth over the next decade.

Better communication is key to wise use of Nature's riches

To ensure that nature's goods and services can continue to support human wellbeing, we need better communication about why biodiversity is important, what its decline means and what can be done about it.

Will biodiversity loss break the bank?

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.

Bushmeat stew: complexities of a shadowy trade

It’s hard for some to imagine sitting down to a meal of baboon, green monkey and warthog meat.