The policy objectives of the injunction and compliance order provisions in the Labour Relations Act 1987

I am asked to discuss policy objectives, so let me first both limit and clarify my credentials to do so. I do not represent Lhe Minister of Labour or his policy advisors, nor are any views I express necessarily those of my employer, the Department of Labour. So I do not write with lhe authority of a policy maker

Quasi-experimental analysis of new mining developments as a driver of deforestation in Zambia

Mining is a vital part of the global, and many national, economies. Mining also has the potential to drive extensive land cover change, including deforestation, with impacts reaching far from the mine itself. Understanding the amount of deforestation associated with mining is important for conservationists, governments, mining companies, and consumers, yet accurate quantification is rare. We applied statistical matching, a quasi-experimental methodology, along with Bayesian hierarchical generalized linear models to assess the impact on deforestation of new mining developments in Zambia from 2000 to present. Zambia is a globally significant producer of minerals and mining contributes ~ 10% of its gross domestic product and ~ 77% of its exports. Despite extensive deforestation in mining impacted land, we found no evidence that any of the 22 mines we analysed increased deforestation compared with matched control sites. The extent forest lost was therefore no different than would likely have happened without the mines being present due to other drivers of deforestation in Zambia. This suggests previous assessments based on correlative methodologies may overestimate the deforestation impact of mining. However, mining can have a range of impacts on society, biodiversity, and the local environment that are not captured by our analysis

Correspondence of Satellite Measured Phenology to European Farmland Bird Distribution Patterns

This report presents research in establishing linkages between remotely sensed information of vegetation cover and biological diversity, specifically focusing on farmland birds. The vegetation cover was investigated via phenological indices derived from time series of satellite images. The quantification of phenological processes is very important for understanding ecosystems and ecological development. Such factors determine population growth and influence species-species interactions (competition, predation, reproduction) and species distribution. Birds have long been used to provide early warning of environmental problems, because they are the best known and documented major taxonomic group, especially in terms of the sizes and trends of populations and distributions. Common farmland birds are in decline throughout Europe, with the cumulative populations of all 33 species of farmland birds suffering a decline of 44 per cent between 1980 and 2005. For the link between vegetation dynamics and farmland birds distribution phenological indices and their spatial statistical characteristics were calculated from the time series of the SPOT Vegetation images. The farmland birds species data were selected from the European Bird Census Counsel (EBCC) Atlas of European breeding birds. Both datasets were then statistically analyzed using the Environmental Stratification of Europe. The study shows that this stratification is very appropriate to describe the spatial distribution of farmland birds. Furthermore it was shown that phenological indicators, especially the start of the growing season, the first greening up measures and the productivity measures are good indicators of the distribution of the European farmland birds and that these indicators are comparable to climatic measures. The importance of using phenological indicators is argued by the illustrated fact that phenological indicators can deliver information on the habitat on a higher spatial resolution that cannot be obtained through climatic data. This combination of information supplies indispensible measures to monitor those environmental changes that most probably lead to the reported dramatic decrease of the species.JRC.DDG.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Identifying Priority Areas for Conservation: A Global Assessment for Forest-Dependent Birds

Limited resources are available to address the world's growing environmental problems, requiring conservationists to identify priority sites for action. Using new distribution maps for all of the world's forest-dependent birds (60.6% of all bird species), we quantify the contribution of remaining forest to conserving global avian biodiversity. For each of the world's partly or wholly forested 5-km cells, we estimated an impact score of its contribution to the distribution of all the forest bird species estimated to occur within it, and so is proportional to the impact on the conservation status of the world's forest-dependent birds were the forest it contains lost. The distribution of scores was highly skewed, a very small proportion of cells having scores several orders of magnitude above the global mean. Ecoregions containing the highest values of this score included relatively species-poor islands such as Hawaii and Palau, the relatively species-rich islands of Indonesia and the Philippines, and the megadiverse Atlantic Forests and northern Andes of South America. Ecoregions with high impact scores and high deforestation rates (2000–2005) included montane forests in Cameroon and the Eastern Arc of Tanzania, although deforestation data were not available for all ecoregions. Ecoregions with high impact scores, high rates of recent deforestation and low coverage by the protected area network included Indonesia's Seram rain forests and the moist forests of Trinidad and Tobago. Key sites in these ecoregions represent some of the most urgent priorities for expansion of the global protected areas network to meet Convention on Biological Diversity targets to increase the proportion of land formally protected to 17% by 2020. Areas with high impact scores, rapid deforestation, low protection and high carbon storage values may represent significant opportunities for both biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, for example through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiatives

Open-source mapping and services for Web-based land-cover validation

Monitoring land-cover changes on sites of conservation importance allows environmental problems to be detected, solutions to be developed and the effectiveness of actions to be assessed. However, the remoteness of many sites or a lack of resources means these data are frequently not available. Remote sensing may provide a solution, but large-scale mapping and change detection may not be appropriate, necessitating site-level assessments. These need to be easy to undertake, rapid and cheap. We present an example of a Web-based solution based on free and open-source software and standards (including PostGIS, OpenLayers, Web Map Services, Web Feature Services and GeoServer) to support assessments of land-cover change (and validation of global land-cover maps). Authorised users are provided with means to assess land-cover visually and may optionally provide uncertainty information at various levels: from a general rating of their confidence in an assessment to a quantification of the proportions of land-cover types within a reference area. Versions of this tool have been developed for the TREES-3 initiative (Simonetti, Beuchle and Eva, 2011). This monitors tropical land-cover change through ground-truthing at latitude / longitude degree confluence points, and for monitoring of change within and around Important Bird Areas (IBAs) by Birdlife International and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). In this paper we present results from the second of these applications. We also present further details on the potential use of the land-cover change assessment tool on sites of recognised conservation importance, in combination with NDVI and other time series data from the eStation (a system for receiving, processing and disseminating environmental data). We show how the tool can be used to increase the usability of earth observation data by local stakeholders and experts, and assist in evaluating the impact of protection regimes on land-cover change

Identifying unique areas in the Congo Basin for conservation

A major challenge in conservation biology is to identify areas to be protected in priority. With the hypotheses in mind that areas presenting unique environmental features when compared to their surroundings are more likely 1) to be vulnerable to changes and 2) hosting relatively more specialized species, we performed a global analysis to identify singular forested areas and further explored the relationship of those areas with forest bird richness and endemism. Using a moving window of 50 x 50 km, we computed, across the earth's surface, on a grid of 5 x 5 km resolution the probabilities for each cell to find similar biophysical features elsewhere in the window. The input variables were, NDVI and NDWI, slope, and the percentages of grassland and tree covers. This systematic screening allowed us to map areas presenting unique features and to further correlate this information with the level of the correlation between bird endemism and species richness. At the global scale, we found the forested biomes of the Congo Basin, namely the Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests and the Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands among the most homogeneous ones for what concern our environmental variables. While it is well-known that the Tropical Moist Forest is the biome holding the biggest diversity in terms of bird-species richness, the relationship between biomes and endemism levels is less documented. If we found that more than half of our variables explained bird endemism for the moist forests, such characterization of the level of endemism was not straightforward for other biomes. More relevant to the identification of potential new areas to focus on for biodiversity conservation, we found that the Tropical and Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests shown little ecological heterogeneity and consequently present only a few unique areas. Interestingly, while we found that the relationship between endemism and areas presenting unique environmental features was not obvious for most forested ecosystems, we found a significant relationship between endemism and habitat uniqueness for the Tropical and Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forest. It is the purpose of this contribution to discuss further our preliminary results and to contrast our findings with the current distribution of protected areas in the Congo Basin. (Texte integral

Estimating ecological metrics for holistic conservation management in a biodiverse but information‐poor tropical region

Conservation ecologists face the dual challenge of working with difficult‐to‐study species and providing ecological metrics that support conservation management at global, regional, and local levels. We present metrics identifying distributions, site‐level and global abundance, site‐contextualized habitat requirements, and threats for seven dry forest endemic birds (two threatened, one Near Threatened) in the globally important Tumbes region of Peru. Extents of occurrence ranged from 36,000 to 152,000 km2, and while broad distributions were generally congruent, nearly half of species overlapped 150,000. Site‐level population estimates varied hugely, reflecting size of site and extreme variation in local abundances. Large tree girths and dense low cover generally promoted bird abundance, but stem density acted in opposite directions for different species, implying the need for site‐ and species‐specific habitat management. Habitat quality varied across sites, further complicating management options at the local level (e.g., reduced grazing). We highlight the suitability of our methods in providing useful conservation metrics for data‐poor regions, and demonstrate their application. Importantly, we propose key sites and priority actions for the region, including extensions of existing protected areas