Trexler, Marc C.

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272 Environmental Conservationiv) He/she should have a broad understanding ofenvironmental processes and conservation, andtherefore be able to draw on and develop theexpertise of the team.The function of the TEC should involve performingsuch duties as: helping to appoint the team, liaising withhead teachers and their staff, coordinating the relation-ship between teacher and CEA, acting as consultant/adviser to the group, coordinating policy, communica-ting with and coordinating the local community, keepingabreast of topical issues and publications as well as localorganizations etc., fund-raising (possibly!), and all thetime training the team by developing skills, discussingideas and problems, and encouraging initiative. An atti-tude of adventure should he encouraged throughout.FinanceThe plan is to set up a team of keen unemployednaturalists (teachers, graduates, and others) to workwith the primary schools in the (human) catchment areaof Langtree School (a comprehensive school at Wood-cote, Oxfordshire, England). The scheme will be rely-ing very heavily on the Manpower Services Com-mission (MSC), from whom we have obtained thesupport for six part-time places. A charitable Trust is,however, being established to cover administrative andsupervisory expenses and to provide a cushion againstany political or MSC changes, so that donations willalways be welcome.STEPHEN R. HARTHammonds Farm, CheckendonReading RG8 ONS, England, UK.Leaf from a Graduate Student's Paper: Our Message about The Biosphere Evidently Sinking In*I never really thought about The Biosphere untilPolunin addressed our class. Though I had heard of TheBiosphere before, I had never thought about how itencompasses our very life. I told some of my friends thatwe were drawing up some proposals about The Bios-phere and were possibly going to get them published inan internationally read environmental journal. Theyscoffed and asked how I could think that they could takeus, a bunch of idealistic college students, seriously aboutsomething as important as The Biosphere. I did not ans-wer, but thought to myself about that Ben Franklinquote which was on the board the other day: 'They manwho does things may make mistakes, but he nevermakes the biggest mistake of doing nothing.'I kept thinking that they can go on studying their eco-nomics, political science, and business law, but that theywill have to make the decision of whether to act or notsomeday. Clearly, education will have to play a key role ifwe are to save The Biosphere. We must learn to get alongwith The Biosphere, for it is our environment, our air,and our life-blood. If we do not modernize and rethinkour environmental policies soon, it may become toolate. Teaching the responsibilities and consequences ofhuman occupance of The Biosphere is analogous toteaching people about their own homes.If you do not maintain the condition of yourhome—its physical plant and family—it will soon startto degrade. Once degradation has started, new policiesmust be implemented quickly to stop failure of thestructure of the house and its inhabiting family. A houseis not a home without people living in it, just as TheBiosphere is nothing without [plenty of] that indefinablething we call life. I thought that point five of our propo-sal was very good: Upholding The Biosphere as sacred,as life itself is sacred, will serve to help Manking to saveit.* Kindly communicated by Professor Henryk Skolimowski,whose submission with his students on 'The Biosphere as Seenby Students from Ann Arbor, Michigan', was published latelast year (Environmental Conservation, 10(4), p. 356,1983).—Ed.International Conservation Conventions: Are They Being Implemented?The undersigned and Laura H. Kosloff are currentlyconducting investigations into the implementation ofinternational conservation conventions. The 'imple-mentation gap' is a well-recognized but inadequatelystudied phenomenon which seriously hampers conser-vation efforts. Information on whether, and if so how,international legal instruments for conservation arebeing implemented in individual countries has never, sofar as we are aware, been collected or analyzed. Theinformation or materials in which we are most interest-ed includes:—Copies or at least citations of any reports, memo-randa, or papers, discussing the implementation ofCITES, World Heritage, Ramsar, Western Hemi-sphere, as well as other international conventionsand agreements dealing with habitats, species, orgenetic resources. (This information can be generalor specific with respect to a particular country.)—Information on the specific national legislationimplementing these conventions in individualcountries, and on the legislation's strengths andweaknesses (in carrying out such implementation).—Personal and organizational views on the imple-mentation and effectiveness of particular conven-tions, their strengths and weaknesses, their particu-lar advantages and drawbacks, and the politics oftheir adoption and implementation.Any information which readers of EnvironmentalConservation may be able to provide will help us inunderstanding what is happening with the current bodyof international conventions, in what directions theycan and should go in the future, and whether furtherconventions would be appropriate. Your cooperationwould be greatly appreciated. Confidentiality can bemaintained if desired. Please send any responses andpertinent information to the undersigned.MARC C. TREXLER, Research AssociateInternational Union for Conservation of Natureand Natural Resources (IUCN)Avenue du Mont-Blanc1196 GlandSwitzerland.https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892900014363Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 12:44:25, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at

International Conservation Conventions: Are they Being Implemented?

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