Marine turtles have been used for eggs, meat, shell, oil, leather or other products for 7000 years. Modern times have introduced another way for society to profit from these species - to generate economic income as a tourism attraction. Sound turtle management relies on local communities, which – as economic incentive - should receive a fair share of the revenues. In many cases, the bulk of the revenues from the local level end up elsewhere, eve...

Three-quarters of all poor people still live in rural areas. They are heavily reliant on natural resources for their livelihoods: soil, water, forests and fisheries underpin commercial and subsistence activities and often provide a safety net to the poor in times of crises. These natural resources which are abundant in many developing countries - represent an important asset and potential wealth for poor people and their communities. As many of t...

More than two billion people cannot access affordable energy services today. They depend on inefficient locally collected and often unprocessed biomass-based fuels, such as crop residues, wood, and animal dung. Because convenient, affordable energy can contribute to a household’s productivity and income generating potential, its availability can help families and communities break out of the cycle of poverty. At the same time it also provides gro...

In more than hundred countries around the world, miners dig minerals and metals out of the ground, satisfying a slowly but continuously increasing demand from industrial production, agriculture, construction, high-tech sectors, and merchandise producers. In contrast to the other natural resources presented here, minerals are a finite resource, and the resource and their profits needs to be managed carefully to ensure sustained livelihoods after t...

Carbon trading of credits from avoided deforestation could yield billions of dollars for tropical countries, according to an analysis by Rhett A.Butler, founder and editor from mongabay.com, a leading tropical forest web site. The proposed mechanism - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD) - will enable these countries to maintain their forests as a global resource. Using conservative estimates on carbon storage in ...

The government of Sierra Leone saw a total of USD 5.2 million (2004) in revenues from diamond related activities. This comes in the form of mining, dealer and export license fees and from export taxes. To feed some of the revenues back to poor communities, the Diamond Areas Community Development Fund (DACDF) has been set up, with an annual commitment of 25% of revenue from export taxes. The intention is that this money will be dedicated to commun...

The Mabira forest reserve, on the shores of Lake Victoria hosts valuable wildlife, serves as a timber resource, provides ecosystem services for the water balance and the rainforests represents a tourist destination. Following a proposed plan for clearing a third of the reserve for agricultural use, the values of the forest were calculated by local researchers. This economic evaluation of the forest shows that from a short-term perspective, growin...

Approximately 240 million of the world's poor that live in forested areas of developing countries depend on forests for their livelihoods. Forest and its products provide cash income, jobs, and consumption goods for poor families. Forestry provides formal and informal employment for an estimated 40-60 million people. The sector contributes in some developing countries more than eight per cent to GDP. Timber may be the most important forest produc...

Freshwater – a natural resource which has been adopted as a human right by the UN in 2002: 'the human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient; affordable; physically accessible; safe and acceptable water for personal and domestic uses'. People depend on this resource for drinking and cooking, for irrigation of farms, for hygiene and sanitation and for power generation. The map presenting this resource only focuses on one part of the geogra...

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) consists of 15 countries, with 233 million inhabitants. Apart from Mauritius and the countries around South Africa in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), the remaining countries exhibit low rates of electricity access and use of high quality fuels. Easy access to electricity and power increases the living standard and enables the development of additional services.

Primary ocean productivity, as measured in grammes of carbon per square meter, from remote sensing imagery outlines the areas with rich marine life. These areas are characterised by an abundance of marine life and they provide natural resources in terms of fisheries and harvesting of these resources. The map is a part of a set, presenting different natural resources, with a focus on developing countries, and the use of natural resources for econo...

In 1970s and 1980s - years of environmental crisis, there were few trees remaining in Niger. Wind-blown sands razed farmers' young crops and they often had to plant crops three times to succeed. Since the middle of the 1980s in the most densely populated parts of Niger farmers have begun to protect and manage young trees and bushes regenerating on their cultivated fields. This is natural farmer-managed forest regeneration. Some trees fix nitrogen...

The Republic of Fiji is a small island country in the South Pacific Ocean. The country has a population of 850 000 people spread out over an archipelago of islands. The largest ones, Viti Levu and Vanua Leva houses the majority of the inhabitants.

Mass-balance estimates for Greenland show thickening at high elevations since the early 1990s at rates that increased to about 4 cm per year after 2000, consistent with expectations of increasing snowfall in a warming climate. However, this mass gain is far exceeded by losses associated with large increases in thinning of the ice sheet near the coast. Total loss from the ice sheet more than doubled, from a few tens of billions of tonnes per year ...

Antarctica represents a very unique and special case on our planet. With the richness of the Southern Ocean, the coasts and the Southern islands have relatively high biodiversity and biomass in the form of numerous sea birds - such as penguins and mammals such as seals and sea lions - primarily around the Antarctic peninsula - in the Marielandia Arctic Tundra ecoregion. In contrast - the inland of the Antarctic continent are a cold, windy and inh...

Antarctica is interesting for many types of researchers. For example, glaciologists study the ice and snow, while oceanographers look at the oceans. The ice, snow and oceans affect the global climate and are presently changing as a result of global warming. The many other types of researchers who work here include geologists (who study rocks), astronomers (who study outer space), and meteorologists (who study the weather). How do researchers stud...

The more recent history, from the middle ages and up until now, show increasing temperatures, rising as the world emerged from the Little Ice Age (LIA), around 1850. With the industrial era, human activities have at the same time increased the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is one of the main greenhouse gases, and scientists have been able to connect human activities ...

Bird species that migrate to the Arctic coasts and wetlands arrive from nearly every corner of the planet. During the summer, the sun never or nearly never sets, resulting in a short but intensive breeding season when millions of migratory birds arrive in the Arctic to breed. The majority of these birds seek the wetlands and coastal shores of the tundra plains. No other place on Earth receives so many migratory species from nearly all corners of ...

Climate change, due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, has not lead as clear changes in the Antarctic as in the Arctic. Some of the ice shelves of the Antarctic peninsula have split up and started moving more rapidly, but the analyses of the Antarctic ice sheet are inconclusive. The projected climate situation in 2090 are presented in this figure, the temperatures are annual values from the NCAR-CCM3 model, ensembl...

The Arctic represents one of the most desolate and sparsely populated areas in the World, with few economic opporunities and inhostile climate. This map - based on the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR) definition of the Arctic, presents the distribution by country. Note that except for Greenland and Northern Canada, indigenous peoples form a minority, though they can form the majority in local communities. They are therefore particularly vul...