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High Conservation Value Area
High conservation value forest (HCVF) is a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) forest management designation used to describe those forests who meet criteria defined by the FSC Principles and Criteria of Forest Stewardship. Specifically, high conservation value forests are those that possess one or more of the following attributes: # forest areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant: concentrations of biodiversity values (e.g. endemism, endangered species, refugia); and/or large landscape-level forests, contained within, or containing the management unit, where viable populations of most if not all naturally occurring species exist in natural patterns of distribution and abundance # forest areas that are in or contain rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems # forest areas that provide basic services of nature in critical situations (e.g. watershed protection, erosion control) # forest areas fundamental to meeting basic needs of local communities (e.g. subsisten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forest Stewardship Council
The Forest Stewardship Council A. C. (FSC) is an international non-profit, multistakeholder organization established in 1993 that promotes responsible management of the world's forests via timber certification. It is an example of a market-based certification program used as a transnational environmental policy. Purpose The FSC's stated mission is to "promote environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests". To this end, the body has published a global strategy with five goals: # Advancing globally responsible forest management. # Ensure equitable access to the benefits of FSC systems. # Ensure integrity, credibility and transparency of the FSC system. # Create business value for products from FSC certified forests. # Strengthen the global network to deliver on goals 1 through 4. These goals are promoted, managed, and developed through six program areas: forests, chain of custody, social policy, monitoring and e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Precautionary Principle
The precautionary principle (or precautionary approach) is a broad epistemological, philosophical and legal approach to innovations with potential for causing harm when extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking. It emphasizes caution, pausing and review before leaping into new innovations that may prove disastrous. Critics argue that it is vague, self-cancelling, unscientific and an obstacle to progress. In an engineering context, the precautionary principle manifests itself as the factor of safety, discussed in detail in the monograph of Elishakoff. It was apparently suggested, in civil engineering, by Belindorde Bélidor, Bernard Forest, La science des ingénieurs, dans la conduite des travaux de fortification et d'architecture civile, Paris: Chez Claude Jombert 1729 in 1729. Interrelation between safety factor and reliability is extensively studied by engineers and philosophers. The principle is often used by policy makers in situations where there is the possi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crisis Ecoregion
A crisis ecoregion is a terrestrial biome facing significant threat to its biodiversity and requiring well directed conservation efforts in order to curb the irreversible loss of plant and animal species and their surrounding habitats. Generally, an ecoregion is understood to be an area of particular ecological importance because of diminishing habitats and ecosystems, but a crisis ecoregion is one that is particularly vulnerable and is listed as 'critical'Jonathan M. Hoekstra, Timothy M. Boucher, Taylor M. Ricketts, and Carter Roberts. Confronting a biome crisis: global disparities of habitat loss and protection. Ecology Letters, 8:23-29, 2005 because of a high Conservation Risk Index (CRI). See also *Biodiversity * Conservation biology *Ecology * Ecoregions *Protected Areas Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological or cultural values. There are several kinds of protected areas, which vary by le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conservation Priority
Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an interdisciplinary subject drawing on natural and social sciences, and the practice of natural resource management. The conservation ethic is based on the findings of conservation biology. Origins The term conservation biology and its conception as a new field originated with the convening of "The First International Conference on Research in Conservation Biology" held at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, California, in 1978 led by American biologists Bruce A. Wilcox and Michael E. Soulé with a group of leading university and zoo researchers and conservationists including Kurt Benirschke, Sir Otto Frankel, Thomas Lovejoy, and Jared Diamond. The meeting was prompted due to concern over tropical deforestation, disappearin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biological Integrity
Biological integrity is associated with how "pristine" an environment is and its function relative to the potential or original state of an ecosystem before human alterations were imposed. Biological integrity is built on the assumption that a decline in the values of an ecosystem's functions are primarily caused by human activity or alterations. The more an environment and its original processes are altered, the less biological integrity it holds for the community as a whole. If these processes were to change over time naturally, without human influence, the integrity of the ecosystem would remain intact. The integrity of the ecosystem relies heavily on the processes that occur within it because those determine what organisms can inhabit an area and the complexities of their interactions. Most of the applications of the notion of biological integrity have addressed aquatic environments, but there have been efforts to apply the concept to terrestrial environments. Determining the pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biodiversity Hotspots
A biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic region with significant levels of biodiversity that is threatened by human habitation. Norman Myers wrote about the concept in two articles in ''The Environmentalist'' in 1988 and 1990, after which the concept was revised following thorough analysis by Myers and others into “Hotspots: Earth’s Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions” and a paper published in the journal ''Nature'', both in 2000. To qualify as a biodiversity hotspot on Myers' 2000 edition of the hotspot map, a region must meet two strict criteria: it must contain at least 1,500 species of vascular plants (more than 0.5% of the world's total) as endemics, and it has to have lost at least 70% of its primary vegetation. Globally, 36 zones qualify under this definition. These sites support nearly 60% of the world's plant, bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species, with a high share of those species as endemics. Some of these hotspots support up ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits to humans provided by the natural environment and healthy ecosystems. Such ecosystems include, for example, agroecosystems, forest ecosystem, grassland ecosystems, and aquatic ecosystems. These ecosystems, functioning in healthy relationships, offer such things as natural pollination of crops, clean air, extreme weather mitigation, and human mental and physical well-being. Collectively, these benefits are becoming known as ecosystem services, and are often integral to the provision of food, the provisioning of clean drinking water, the decomposition of wastes, and the resilience and productivity of food ecosystems. While scientists and environmentalists have discussed ecosystem services implicitly for decades, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) in the early 2000s popularized this concept. There, ecosystem services are grouped into four broad categories: ''provisioning'', such as the production of food and water; ''regul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consumer Goods Forum
The Consumer Goods Forum is a global organization of 400 consumer goods companies with the likes of Amazon and Kellogg being involved. It represents combined sales of 2.5 trillion Euros across 70 countries and 10 million employees. Overview The CGF was formed in 2009.Amy LarkinAlmost a Home Run for the Climate GreenPeace.org, November 29, 2010 It is headquartered in Paris, and has regional offices in Washington, D.C. and Tokyo. Alongside the USAID, it has vowed to reduce deforestation.Consumer Goods Forum plans to tackle deforestation and other key drivers of climate change '''', December ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bonsucro
Bonsucro is an international not for-profit, multistakeholder governance group established in 2008 to promote sustainable sugar cane. Its stated aim is to reduce 'the environmental and social impacts of sugarcane production while recognising the need for economic viability'. It does this through setting sustainability standards and certifying sugar cane products including ethanol, sugar and molasses. , 25% of global land planted in sugar cane was Bonsucro certified. Bonsucro has more than 500 members in more than 40 countries around the world including farmers, millers, traders, buyers and support organisations. Bonsucro is one of the few certifications to have developed measures for greenhouse gas emissions, and consequently the European Commission has stated that the Bonsucro standard can be used to demonstrate compliance with the EU Renewables Directive (EU RED) when importing ethanol fuel, although the standard had to be altered to comply fully. Both Bonsucro and the st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Better Cotton Initiative
The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) is a non-profit, multistakeholder governance group that promotes better standards in cotton farming and practices across 21 countries. As of 2017, Better Cotton accounts for 14% of global cotton production. In the 2016-2017 cotton season, 1.3 million licensed BCI Farmers produced 3.3 million metric tonnes of Better Cotton lint, enabling a record-level of more sustainably produced cotton to enter the global supply chain. Partner retailers include H&M, Gap, IKEA, and Levi Strauss, and include funding partners from USAID. At the end of 2017, BCI had 1,197 members – 85 retailer and brand members, 1,039 supplier and manufacturer members, 32 producer organisation members, 31 civil society members and 12 associate members. BCI contributes towards the UN's goals to achieve better global water sustainability and sustainable agriculture. BCI farmers receive training on how to use water efficiently, care for the health of the soil and natural habitats ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roundtable On Sustainable Palm Oil
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was established in 2004 with the objective of promoting the growth and use of sustainable palm oil products through global standards and multistakeholder governance model, multistakeholder governance. The seat of the association is in Zurich, Switzerland, while the secretariat is currently based in Kuala Lumpur, with a satellite office in Jakarta. RSPO currently has 4,706 members from 94 countries. 51,999,404 metric tonnes of palm oil produced in 2016 was RSPO certified. Criticisms The RSPO has been criticised by various sectors, especially the environmental NGOs. Issues include the impact of palm oil plantations on the orangutan population; rainforest destruction, destruction of tropical forest for the new oil palm plantations; the burning and draining of large tracts of peat swamp forest in Borneo, Malaysia. The fact that RSPO members are allowed to clear cut pristine forest areas, when there are large areas of grasslands available ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Tropical Timber Organization
The International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) is an intergovernmental organization that promotes conservation of tropical forest resources and their sustainable management, use and trade. Organization The organization was established under the International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA), which was sponsored by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and was ratified in 1985. Its mandate was renewed by the International Tropical Timber Agreement, 1994 and again by the International Tropical Timber Agreement, 2006, which aims to promote sustainable management and legal harvesting of forests that produce tropical timber, and to promote expansion and diversification of international timber trade from these forests. The governing body is the International Tropical Timber Council (ITTC). Half the votes on the ITTC are assigned to producing countries and half to consumers. Within each block, votes are assigned based on market share. Mandate and activities The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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