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Biodiversity and agriculture in the Mediterranean region
This report, Biodiversity and agriculture in the Mediterranean region: A species conservation perspective, is designed to inform policymakers, conservation practitioners, and stakeholders across the Mediterranean region. Its purpose is to highlight the current challenges posed to biodiversity by intensive agricultural pressures, while identifying solutions and opportunities to reconcile biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture. It acknowledges that while certain unsustainable agricultural activities pose a key threat to species conservation in the Mediterranean, agricultural landscapes also provide habitat to numerous species – so considering agriculture as a threat requires a more nuanced approach, given its inherent linkages to nature.
First Payment for Environmental Services Scheme in Cuba: Promoting carbon removal through sustainable forest management
Cuba’s geological evolution, climate, and insular geography led to highly diverse ecosystems with various endemic species. Nonetheless, declining forest cover and climate change hazards have threatened the country’s rich biodiversity. Moreover, CO2 emissions accelerate the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, in addition to harming human well-being.
To address these challenges, the Cuban government, with support from the Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Ecovalor project, established a payment for environmental services scheme that rewards carbon removal through sustainable forest management.
By March 2025, the scheme disbursed USD 238,000 (CUP 5,709,066) in payment for environmental services, associated with the removal of 999,473 tons of carbon across 12,646 hectares of forest. This initiative contributes to climate mitigation, ecosystem conservation, and the responsible use of natural resources in Cuba.
Guía sobre la evaluación de impacto acumulativo en la biodiversidad para desarrollos eólicos y solares e infraestructura asociada
Un objetivo clave de esta guía es replantear la EIA para ayudar a apoyar la conservación de la biodiversidad y el logro de los objetivos globales relacionados (junto con los objetivos climáticos y otros objetivos de desarrollo social). Esta guía se centra en la biodiversidad y el desarrollo eólico y solar, y está dirigida principalmente a planificadores gubernamentales y promotores de proyectos. Sin embargo, dado que está diseñada para ayudar a abordar algunos de los desafíos existentes en la EIA, su aplicabilidad es potencialmente más amplia.
IUCN Species Survival Commission biobanking guidelines for conservation purposes
The guidelines call for and delineate standardised approaches, from collecting and storing samples to using and sharing data. Lastly, the guidelines illustrate which international and national regulations have to be considered. This document aims to be a resource that guides the reader through the fundamental decision processes for establishing, managing and implementing biobanks. Only through a harmonised and standardised approach within a global network will we be able to fully utilise the potential of biobanks across the world.
Lignes directrices sur l’exploitation des espèces menacées
Les sociétés du monde entier exploitent les espèces sauvages, dans une mesure plus ou moins grande, pour l’alimentation, les matériaux de construction, les soins de santé, les médicaments, la lutte contre les parasites, l’ornementation, générer des revenus, les loisirs, ainsi qu’à des fins culturelles et spirituelles. Si cette utilisation des espèces sauvages contribue directement au bien-être de milliards de personnes dans le monde, la surexploitation des espèces sauvages est l’un des principaux facteurs de perte de biodiversité.
Radical Restoration: Democratizing Climate Tech for Ecosystem Recovery
In 2024, Distant Imagery Solutions planted 5.5 million mangroves in the UAE using self-engineered wooden drones designed for simplicity, adaptability, and cost-effectiveness. This milestone redefines the potential of community-driven, ecosystem-based restoration.
With projects ready in Brazil, Tonga, Kenya, and Indonesia, Distant Imagery empowers communities to lead. Our licensing and training platform equips locals to build and operate drones, fostering global knowledge exchange.
More than a technological solution, this is a movement of shared empowerment and stewardship. By connecting communities, Distant Imagery creates a global network innovating together to restore ecosystems and build climate resilience.
Also, our AI-powered Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) system tracks restoration progress and combats illegal activities, ensuring ecological recovery and long-term protection.
Using drones for non-invasive monitoring and assessment of crocodilian populations – a generalizable and accessible tool for stakeholders in conservation
This standartised solution combines drone technology and an innovative allometric approach to monitor and assess crocodilian populations who face significant threats, leading to population declines with 50% the 27 crocodilian species are threatened, with 25% critically endangered. Drones equipped with high-resolution cameras capture images of even partially submerged crocodiles, allowing precise, non-invasive length estimates based on head-to-body allometric ratios. This method overcomes challenges like logistical constraints, cost, need for highly trained personnel, observer bias, detectability, wildlife disturbance, and safety risks of traditional surveys. By covering remote areas efficiently, the solution enhances biodiversity mo,nitoring, informs conservation strategies, and enables a wide range of additional information to be collected. This solution is very cheap, requiring minimal training, and accessible to a wide range of users, including indigenous peoples and local communities and conservation practitioners.
Forest Cloud: A Digital Hub for Global Restoration and Conservation
The Restoration Platform, the core of Forest Cloud, transforms global restoration by simplifying fundraising and ensuring transparency for forest conservation. Since 2018, it has evolved to bring back a trillion trees and conserve 3 trillion existing trees. The open-source, open access, digital solution currently supports scientific restoration initiatives as well as managing and coordinating conservation and restoration efforts globally. It benefits from robust Restoration Standards, proprietary restoration monitoring applications, a robust peer-review system and an ecosystem of ancillary digital solutions – the ‘Forest Cloud’. Proven across 300 restoration initiatives and growing, the Platform unifies restoration organizations (ROs), donors, and scientists. Having demonstrated its success by restoring over 94M trees in 6 years, we now seek to improve its scale and geographic reach and solve the logistical challenges to contribute to a sustainable, thriving future.
其他有效的区域保护措施指南
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022, provides a framework for the effective implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) through four goals and 23 targets. Target 3 (known as the ‘30×30 target’) calls on Parties to conserve at least 30% of terrestrial, inland waters, and coastal and marine areas by 2030. These guidelines are designed to promote good practices relating to identifying, reporting, monitoring and strengthening OECMs. They are intended for use by a wide range of rightsholders and stakeholders to promote understanding of whether a site meets the CBD criteria for identifying an OECM, how to report OECM data at the national and global levels, and how to monitor and strengthen OECMs.
The Mamba: A Drone-based Robotic Arm to Preserve Endangered Plants in Cliff Environments
Tropical islands are home to unique floras, and host a vast number of endemic plant species. Threats have led to a significant population decrease in Hawaii, where 97% of these endemic plant species are listed as endangered, critically endangered, or extinct. Vertical cliff habitats work as refugia to protect plants from these threats. However, these habitats make conservation work particularly difficult, forcing botanists to use risky and time-consuming methods such as abseiling to access remote plant populations. We developed the Mamba, the first aerial system capable of sampling plants on cliffs. The system has allowed the collection of seeds from many critically endangered species including Hibiscadelphus woodii, as well as the recent discovery of a new species: Schiedea waiahuluensis. The conservation collections made by this tool are thriving in nurseries, demonstrating the impact on the conservation cycle for organisms located in difficult-to-reach environments, and the actions necessary to prevent plant extinction.