As a typical coastal city, Xiamen, Fujian Province, China, faces serious societal challenges such as the impact of climate change, overexploitation of natural resources, and loss of biodiversity. Xiamen is implementing Nature-based Solutions (NbS) by strengthening ecological protection, promoting ecosystem restoration, building sponge city, supporting sustainable community development and green transformation of mines, while encouraging funding and diverse public participation. After more than 30 years of exploration and practice, the green development concept of harmonious coexistence between man and nature has been integrated into areas and processes of Xiamen’s economic and social development, making Xiamen’s practice a global example of excellence in NbS and a model for sustainable development of coastal cities.

This is an introductory course to CPSG’s species conservation planning processes and tools. Our target audiences are government wildlife agency staff, IUCN SSC Specialist Group members, and other conservation professionals working in zoos, aquariums, universities or field programs, responsible for the development of species conservation plans. By the end of the course, participants will be able to: apply the CPSG Species Conservation Planning Principles and Steps to the design and facilitation of species conservation planning processes; demonstrate the role of the facilitator in consensus-based decision making; and select facilitation tools to help groups solve problems, make decisions, and develop plans. Click here to find out more about the course and how to apply to an upcoming session.

Nature is in freefall. Humanity’s addiction to burning fossil fuels and converting natural ecosystems for agriculture is changing the climate, degrading once-productive lands and driving plant and animal species to extinction. And it’s no coincidence that millions of people each year are killed by the direct consequences of poverty, lack of clean water or adequate nutrition, extreme weather and exposure to new virulent pests and diseases.

We now have a better understanding of the power of nature and how to unleash its potential through an extremely important concept: nature-based solutions.

Protecting, restoring and enhancing natural ecosystems holds the potential to help tackle many of the challenges facing our planet – from climate change and nature loss to food insecurity – and to increase resilience to future risks. But these solutions need our support to overcome the structural barriers holding them back.

This IUCN–OIE publication provides a ‘how-to’ guide that will be useful to the growing and diverse range of professionals involved in assessment and management of wildlife-associated disease risk scenarios. The document has been co-written by 22 specialists in the fields of wildlife disease ecology, epidemiology, risk analysis, modelling, disease surveillance, diagnostics, wildlife management, research, teaching and conservation planning. These authors have pooled their knowledge and experience to make tools and processes at the cutting edge of wildlife disease risk analysis accessible to a broad global audience in an effort to ensure healthy ecosystems through better decision making. This is a companion volume to the Guidelines for Wildlife Disease Risk Analysis.

Environmental flows improve water management by ensuring a sustainable water supply to meet the needs of people, agriculture, energy, industry and the environment. Environmental flows are effectively a balance between water resources development and the need to protect freshwater-dependent ecosystems. WANI has contributed to environmental flow assessments in river basins in Asia, America, and Africa over the last 10 years with the aim of reducing environmental impacts and increasing the benefits of river basin development. Through scaling-up, lessons learned have been mainstreamed into integrated water resources management (IWRM) allowing for the capacity building of existing legislation and the establishment of new, appropriate legislation on environmental flows. This influence on IWRM and water policy has resulted in better water resources management.