This paper provides an analysis of the current watershed, water resources and coastal zone management issues in Grenada pursuant to Grenada’s obligations on the Global Environment Facility approved Project entitled “Integrating Management of Watersheds and Coastal Areas in Small Island Watersheds and Coastal Areas in Small Island Developing States in the Caribbean.

This report addresses the challenges of land management in the Lake Victoria basin of East Africa. In 1999 the World Agroforestry Centre launched a major effort to identify, diagnose and reverse degradation in the Lake Victoria basin, focusing primarily on the Kenyan part of the basin. Dubbed “TransVic,” this project was supported by a number of donor agencies and collaborators, with particularly strong support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

This report exposes how these last precious forests in the Indonesian archipelago, particularly in the province of Papua are being felled illegally and sold off wholesale to China, which is now the largest consumer of stolen timber in the world.It highlights the following points:there is a complex web of middlemen and financiers from across the region responsible for masterminding the theft of Indonesia’s forests, including timber barons in Jakarta, officials on their payrolls, multinational companies in Malaysia, brokers in Singapore and log dealers in Hong Kong in just a few short years,

In Vietnam, forest area under the management of local people has expanded from almost nothing in the early 1990s to nearly 3.5 million hectares (27% of the national forest area) in 2006. This study looks at the extent to which such tenure reform has worked in practice and how it has affected local people’s livelihoods and well being. The study finds that:

Land in Meghalaya, India, was traditionally agricultural land, owned by the community. With increasing privatization and rising commercial value of land for non-agricultural use, many owners have sold the land for mining operations. So-called rat-hole coal mining has resulted in environmental degradation as well as in the loss of lives of miners, most of whom are from outside the state. The National Green Tribunal has banned coal mining until safer, more environmentally sound policies and practices are in place.

The coastal zone represents one of the most economically and ecologically important ecosys- tems on the planet, none more so than in southern Africa. This manuscript examines the potential impacts of climate change on the coastal fishes in southern Africa and provides some of the first information for the Southern Hemisphere, outside of Australasia. It begins by describing the coastal zone in terms of its physical characteristics, climate, fish biodiversity and fisheries.

Over the last 25 years a range of management ‘tools’, including zoning plans, permits, education, and more recently management plans, have been applied to regulate access and to control and mitigate impacts associated with human use of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park GBRMP.A multiple-use zoning approach provides high levels of protection for speci c areas whilst allowing reasonable uses, including certain shing activities, to continue in other zones. Zoning has long been regarded as a cornerstone of Marine Park management,

Conflicts associated with natural resources are twice as likely to relapse into conflict in the first five years, an imminent report suggests. Indeed the natural resource curse has been a primary determinant of intra-state conflict in terrible theatres of war such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia. Yet it extends far beyond the battle to acquire precious commodities.

Water crisis is largely a problem of governance.

This information paper illustrates sustainable dryland management practises in communities vulnerable to climate change with case studies in India and the Sudan.In both cases the adaptation programme is presented, including infrastructural strategy and social involvement, followed by results of the programme, subsequent impact on the community and examples of further achievements and successes in local areas.

This new report from FAO and CIFOR challenges the conventional wisdom linking large-scale flooding to deforestation. The report acknowledges that forests can play a role in minimising runoff that causes localised flooding. But it concludes that there is no evidence that a loss of trees significantly contributes to severe widespread flooding. Even at the local level, the report notes, the flood-reducing effects of forests are heavily dependent on soil depth and structure, and saturation levels, not exclusively on the presence of the trees.