Exploring future agricultural development and biodiversity in Uganda,Rwanda and Burundi: a spatially explicit scenario-based assessment

Regional Environmental Change - Competition for land is increasing as a consequence of the growing demands for food and other commodities and the need to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem...     

Out-of-control Olympics: why the IOC is unable to ensure an environmentally sustainable Olympic Games

Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the body responsible for overseeing the organisation of the Olympic Games, has placed a high premium on environmental sustainability for more than two decades, recent editions of the Olympic Games have fallen short of their sustainability goals, or have caused outright environmental harm. By applying a new (principal-agent) perspective and conceptualising the environmental harm caused by the Olympic Games as an agency cost, this article demonstrates that the mechanisms the IOC deploys to control Games organisers are ineffective because they fail to alter the incentives of Games organisers towards compliance with environmental sustainability objectives and that recently proposed changes through the IOC’s Agenda 2020 reforms fail to address this issue. In order to lower agency costs, the IOC must increase its control by involving qualified and independent third parties in its host selection process, provide for a clear mandate in the Host City Contract, and introduce credible sanctions that impose a significant cost on hosts for failing to adhere to environmental objectives.     

Perspectives on area-based conservation and its meaning for future biodiversity policy

During 2021, Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are expected to meet in Kunming, China, to agree on a new global biodiversity framework aimed at halting and reversing biodiversity loss, encouraging the sustainable use of biodiversity, and ensuring the equitable sharing of its benefits. As the post-2020 global biodiversity framework evolves, parties to the convention are being exposed to a range of perspectives on the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, relating to the future framework as a whole or to aspects of it. Area-based conservation measures are one such aspect, and there are diverse perspectives on how new targets might be framed in relation to these measures. These perspectives represent different outlooks on the relationship between human and nonhuman life on Earth. However, in most cases there is a lack of clarity on how they would be implemented in practice, the implications this would have for biodiversity and human well-being, and how they would contribute to achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of “living in harmony with nature.” We sought to clarify these issues by summarizing some of these perspectives in relation to the future of area-based biodiversity conservation. We identified these perspectives through a review of the literature and expert consultation workshops and compiled them into 4 main groups: Aichi+, ambitious area-based conservation perspectives, new conservation, and whole-earth conservation. We found that although the perspectives Aichi+ and whole earth are in some cases at odds with one another, they also have commonalities, and all perspectives have elements that can contribute to developing and implementing the post-2020 global biodiversity framework and achieving the longer term CBD 2050 Vision.