New ‘State of the World’s Mangroves’ report underscores critical links to biodiversity, climate, and communities

The CITES trade database currently holds 7 million records of trade in wildlife and 50,000 scientific names of taxa listed by CITES. It is managed by UNEP-WCMC on behalf of the CITES Secretariat. Trade data can be searched by year, taxon, purpose, or importing / exporting country. The complete database can be downloaded (version 2023.1).

The CITES Trade Database can be queried using the novice querying route (a step by step by wizard) or the expert query route (for those already familiar with CITES trade data).

A Guide to Interpreting Outputs from the UNEP-WCMC CITES Trade Database is available.

Species360 is a non-profit NGO working in wildlife care to improve animal welfare and species conservation. It mobilizes a network of more than 1,300 aquarium, zoo, university, research, and governmental members in 102 countries. A central part of is the Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS), the world’s leading resource for the collection and sharing of data on animals, enabling ex situ institutions to manage their collections effectively and contribute valuable information to global conservation initiatives. ZIMS is the world’s most comprehensive knowledge database on more than 22,000 species. In 2022, Species360 expanded its mission to include flora and extend its operations to horticultural record-keeping, with the addition of Hortis – a specialized software for record-keeping and management of botanical collections.

How to use

Information on Species 360, ZIMS, and Hortis is available at: https://species360.org/about-us/about-species360/

To access Species 360 data it is necessary to register: https://species360.org/become-a-species360-member/

The Living Planet Index measures the state of the world’s biodiversity based on population trends of vertebrate species from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats. The LPI has been adopted by the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) as an indicator of progress towards its targets. The LPI is compiled by WWF and ZSL based on trends in thousands of population time-series data collected from monitored sites around the world. The Living Planet Database contains population time-series data on the abundance of tens of thousands of vertebrate species between 1970 and 2021. It is publicly available, except for some confidential records that cannot be shared.

How to use  

• The annual Living Planet Report can be downloaded at: https://www.wwf.org.uk/our-reports/living-planet-report
• The latest results and the technical supplement are available at: https://www.livingplanetindex.org/
• Data in the Living Planet Database can be searched or downloaded at:

https://github.com/Zoological-Society-of-London/rlpi

These principles were developed by the FAO, IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management, and the Society for Ecological Restoration to support implementation of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. The second edition of was produced by the Society Ecological Restoration in 2019. These Standards provide a guide for everyone involved in restoring degraded ecosystems — whether terrestrial, freshwater, coastal, or marine. They present a robust framework for restoration projects including effective design and implementation. The Standards support development of ecological restoration plans, contracts, consent conditions, and monitoring and auditing criteria. The Standards establish eight principles that underpin ecological restoration and recommend performance measures for restoration activities for industries, communities, and governments to consider. The second edition also includes an expanded glossary of restoration terminology.

Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN) is a fundraising and grant-giving nature conservation charity.

Three types of WFN grant enable grassroots conservationists to scale up their work and make a global impact. Whitley Awards provide £40,000 in project funding over one year as well as profile and training. Follow-on grants enable previous winners to expand effective projects, respond to changing needs, and collaborate with other conservationists, with grants worth up to £100,000 over two years. In 2020 WFN introduced a new strand of Continuation Funding for nature-based solutions that will help secure a sustainable future for wildlife, ecosystems and people. The Whitley Gold Award is worth £100,000.

The purpose of 1995 FAO Code of Conduct is to set international standards of behaviour for responsible practices to ensure the effective conservation, management and development of aquatic resources, the ecosystem, and biodiversity. These standards may be implemented at the national, subregional, and regional levels.

Small-scale fisheries provide food security, livelihoods and income to millions of people but their management still presents a challenge to managers and other stakeholders due to problems in gathering suitable information and its incorporation in fisheries policy. Fishers are a key source of knowledge for assessment of both extractive capacity and value in small-scale fisheries, in addition to providing a broad array of cultural knowledge. The increasing recognition of the value of incorporating traditional fishing knowledge in freshwater, riverine, lacustrine and coastal and marine fisheries management is now evident in international conventions and published literature. The purpose of these guidelines is to make it easier for users to recognise and include fishers’ knowledge as an important data stream in resource management. The report includes details on the breadth of knowledge that can be gathered, how it can be gathered, and how this information can be applied to support sustainable fisheries policy and broader applications in society. It contains case studies from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the Pacific.

This World Bank initiative presents the scientific basis for why and how incorporating biodiversity and nature into urban design is crucial for achieving sustainability and resilience in cities and beyond. The report defines key terms and concepts, explores what urban leaders can do to promote them, and offers practical tools and approaches for incorporating urban nature and biodiversity into decision-making.

This document was developed by the IUCN SSC Conservation Planning Specialist Group (CPSG) to build global capacity to save biodiversity and share and understanding of what effective species conservation planning looks like. The document contains 7 fundamental principles and 8 practical steps, and presents a succinct philosophy and framework for good species planning based on CPSG’s over 40 years of experience in species conservation planning. USER GUIDE SIMPLE AND CLEAR USER GUIDE TO THE BASIC PRINCIPLES AND PROCESS OF

The Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has developed this guide to assist countries in assessing to what extent government subsidies are having harmful impacts on biodiversity, and to create action plans to repurpose them to become more nature-positive and enhance positive impacts for both people and nature. The BIOFIN Catalogue of Financing Solutions summarizes over 150 possible financing mechanisms to help countries understand which financing mechanisms are already used around the world. Countries can use this Catalogue to determine priorities for their national biodiversity finance plan.

How to use

The step-by-step guide can be downloaded at:

https://www.biofin.org/knowledge-product/nature-subsidies-step-step-guide-repurpose-subsidies-harmful-biodiversity-and

Further information on BIOFIN and the Catalogue of Financing Solutions are available at:

https://www.biofin.org/

ECOLEX is an information service on environmental law, operated jointly by FAO, IUCN, and UNEP. Its purpose is to build global capacity by providing the most comprehensive possible source of information on environmental law, in an easily accessible form. This is particularly helpful in developing countries and countries with economies in transition, where government officials, practitioners, environmental managers, non-profit institutions and academia may not have easy access to the information they need to develop the legal tools  needed to promote environmental management.

The ECOLEX database includes information on treaties, international soft-law and other non-binding policy and technical guidance documents, national legislation, judicial decisions, and law and policy literature. Users can access the abstracts and indexing information about each document, as well as to the full text of most of the information provided.

This introductory guide draws on a number of key IUCN Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) papers, case studies and background documents to provide a practical introduction to the RLE. It targets those who wish to gain a deeper understanding of the RLE as a risk assessment tool and those who wish to learn more about its possible applications in implementing conservation action. This document draws heavily on Version 1 of the Guidelines for the application of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems Criteria and Categories and provides an overview of the scientific foundations supporting the RLE categories and criteria.