Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) is among the most lucrative illegal industries in the world and is a significant driver of biodiversity decline. This paper outline the basics of IWT and discuss its cascading consequences on environments, human lives and communities, national stability, and the economy.
A sustainable future requires securing of the fundamental relationship between humans and biodiversity. This article highlights the importance of tapping into Indigenous and local knowledge for the conservation of biodiversity
A study published by Mukhopadhyay et al., 2023 investigates the long-term impact of subsurface drainage (SSD) on soil quality restoration and sugarcane productivity in waterlogged saline Vertisols in India. By using soil and water samples together with a farmer field survey, the authors showed that SSD significantly reduced soil salinity and improved various soil properties, leading to increased sugarcane yields by up to 585.5%. Farmers' perceptions indicated that SSD technology could substantially improve soil conditions and crop yields, and large-scale adoption of the technology will support the Sustainable Development Goals related to Land, No Poverty, and Zero Hunger in saline soils of India.
Knowledge of biological diversity is a major source of innovation. Collective intellectual property of traditional knowledge by Indigenous peoples and local communities is an important source of innovation and product development. This article investigates collective intellectual property systems on the traditional knowledge of Aspalathus linearis, also known as rooibos—an endemic plant from South Africa which is the basis of an important herbal tea industry. The article discusses how collective action and self-organization can generate collective intellectual property systems; indigenous peoples and local communities can develop these systems to protect their IP; how these systems can promote social justice and a more equitable distribution of benefits but can be sources of dispute between socio-economic groups and communities and can reproduce historical inequalities and power asymmetries.
The paper addresses the urgent need to halt species extinction by proposing a global prioritization strategy for conservation, leveraging individual population data to identify priority areas that significantly enhance the long-term persistence of threatened terrestrial mammal species, thus providing a more effective and efficient approach for meeting the targets outlined in the Global Biodiversity Framework.
The paper presented a comprehensive analysis of the research/publications landscape on the application of Machine Learning in Climate Change Research based on data.
A perspective piece on best practices to improve grassland restoration success worldwide
The paper underscores the need for improved conservation efforts in the tropics, using Bangladesh as a case study, by revealing gaps in protected area coverage for species representation and providing spatial prioritization to guide future expansion efforts, ultimately contributing to meeting global biodiversity targets outlined in the Kunming-Montreal Framework.
This paper supports SDG 15 by showing that mangroves contribute substantially to food security and nutrition of coastal communities in Indonesia, and thus the conservation of mangroves is important not only for carbon storage and biodiversity, but also for the communities living near them.
The potential distribution of two important invasive alien plants in South Africa, Prosopis spp and A. mearnsii, was predicted using the MaxEnt model.
