A spatial overview of the global importance of Indigenous lands for conservation

Understanding the scale, location and nature conservation values of the lands over which Indigenous Peoples exercise tradi- tional rights is central to implementation of several global conservation and climate agreements. However, spatial information on Indigenous lands has never been aggregated globally. Here, using publicly available geospatial resources, we show that Indigenous Peoples manage or have tenure rights over at least ~38 million km2 in 87 countries or politically distinct areas on all inhabited continents. This represents over a quarter of the world’s land surface, and intersects about 40% of all terrestrial protected areas and ecologically intact landscapes (for example, boreal and tropical primary forests, savannas and marshes). Our results add to growing evidence that recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ rights to land, benefit sharing and institutions is essential to meeting local and global conservation goals. The geospatial analysis presented here indicates that collaborative partnerships involving conservation practitioners, Indigenous Peoples and governments would yield significant benefits for conservation of ecologically valuable landscapes, ecosystems and genes for future generations

Collaborative Education as a ‘New (Urban) Civil Politics of Climate Change’.

This book argues that the relationship between cities and climate change is entering a new and more urgent phase. Thirteen contributions from a range of leading scholars explore the need to rethink and reorient urban life in response to climatic change. Split into four parts it begins by asking ‘What is climate urbanism?’ and exploring key features from different locations and epistemological traditions. The second section examines the transformative potential of climate urbanism to challenge social and environmental injustices within and between cities. In the third part authors interrogate current knowledge paradigms underpinning climate and urban science and how they shape contemporary urban trajectories. The final section focuses on the future, envisaging climate urbanism as a new communal project, and focuses on the role of citizens and non-state actors in driving transformative action. Consolidating debates on climate urbanism, the book highlights the opportunities and tensions of urban environmental policy, providing a framework for researchers and practitioners to respond to the urban challenges of a radically climate-changed world

Mapping vulnerability and conservation adaptation strategies under climate change

Identification of spatial gradients in ecosystem vulnerability to global climate change and local stressors is an important step in the formulation and implementation of appropriate countermeasures. Here we build on recent work to map ecoregional exposure to future climate, using an envelope-based gauge of future climate stability - defined as a measure of how similar the future climate of a region will be to the present climate. We incorporate an assessment of each ecoregion's adaptive capacity, based on spatial analysis of its natural integrity - the proportion of intact natural vegetation - to present a measure of global ecosystem vulnerability. The relationship between intactness (adaptive capacity) and stability (exposure) varies widely across ecoregions, with some of the most vulnerable, according to this measure, located in southern and southeastern Asia, western and central Europe, eastern South America and southern Australia. To ensure the applicability of these findings to conservation, we provide a matrix that highlights the potential implications of this vulnerability assessment for adaptation planning and offers a spatially explicit management guide

Anuran responses to pressures from high-amplitude drought–flood–drought sequences under climate change

We measured changes in the occurrence, abundances and evidence of breeding of frogs to a sequence of severe drought–extreme wet–drought in south-eastern Australia, which is projected to characterize the regional climate in the coming decades.We collected data on anuran abundances, species richness and breeding by using aural surveys and visual searches in 80 waterbodies in 10 landscapes. We surveyed six times during the austral winter-springs of 2006 and 2007 (9–10 years into the 13-year ‘Big Dry’ drought), six times in the corresponding seasonsof 2011 and 2012 (the ‘BigWet’) and another six times in 2014 and 2015, which had lapsed into another intense dry period (‘post-BigWet’). The relatively small gains in species occupancy rates and evidence of breeding achieved during the Big Wet following the Big Dry were eroded and reversed in the years after the Big Wet period, with several biotic measures falling substantially below the values for the Big Dry. The global prognosis is for long-term drying and warming, notwithstanding much geographic variation in the degree and temporal patterns of drying. Longer droughts with short periods of wet/benign conditions are projected for many parts of the world. For water-dependent fauna such as most amphibians, our results signal widespread declines in lowland regions experiencing such patterns. If droughts exceed lifespans of frogs, then resistanceto drought will be so low that populations will plunge to levels from which the short periods of more benign conditions will be insufficient to enable substantial recovery