International Conservation & Development

The Global Land Project third Open Science Meeting (GLP 3rd OSM 2016)will be held from 24 - 27th October 2016 in Beijing, the capital of China. The upcoming GLP 3rd OSM 2016will be organized by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences under the coordination of Scientific Steering Committee and International Project Office of GLP.

Climate change-related food scarcity can lead to 500,000 deaths around the world by 2050, a new study has found. The research was the first to come up with an estimated number of deaths, based on changes in diet composition due to global warming.

Eco-certification schemes are many and varied, but just how effective are they? Now one of the first rigorous evaluations finds that certification schemes in Chile, along with a voluntary agreement between timber companies and NGOs, have reduced deforestation by 14%.

Fellow H. Bruce Rinker provides some individual and community actions to reduce the pernicious global problem of marine plastics pollution.

For thousands of years, the marshes at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern day Iraq were an oasis of green in a dry landscape, hosting a wealth of wildlife. The culture of the Marsh Arab, or Ma'dan, people who live there is tightly interwoven with the ecosystem of the marshes.

New research by IIED's Seth Cook, which features in the journal World Development, uses the agri-food sector in Ethiopia and Ghana to show how the role of Chinese migrants in Africa is poorly researched and understood. Read more

The population of the world’s largest primate — a gorilla subspecies that lives in a region of Central Africa beset by conflict — is collapsing. Back in 1998, a team of researchers estimated that 17,000 Grauer’s gorillas, also known as eastern lowland gorillas, lived in the forests of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, the population of Grauer’s gorillas has dropped by 77 percent.

The fact is, international law, especially law based on consensus, moves at a snail’s pace. But it is moving. Adopting the world’s largest MPA in international waters is no small feat and doing it right takes time. Even adopting and implementing MPAs in national waters can take years.

At first, the two-million-dollar rat eradication project on Henderson Island seemed to be working. The invasive rodents that had been gnawing on baby birds and sea turtles dwindled dramatically, with the island population down to just 60 to 80 individuals a few weeks after the bait drop. Today, though, that atoll is once again overrun with rats. In just a few years, the survivors multiplied to 50,000 to 100,000—the same number as before the poisoning. ...