It was just over 50 years ago that the fledgling United Nations expressed its revulsion against the German wartime atrocities, doing so by means of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNGA 1948). The 30 principles declared in 1948 were eventually solidified in 1966 via two widely-adopted international covenants (Afghanistan et al. 1966a, b). However, the need for environmental conservation was nowhere directly mentioned in any of these three landmark documents. Nonetheless, their fundamental principle that every human being has the inherent right to life (UNGA 1948, Article 3; Afghanistan et al. 1966a, Article 6.1) has been inferred to imply the need for an environment adequate for the fulfillment of that right (Westing 1993).

During the past decade, 'partnership' has become a watchword for regional environmental management (Bronars & Michaels 1997). Partnerships, in the context of environmental conservation, can be defined as collaborative efforts to achieve shared management objectives which engage, but are not limited to, non-profit groups, for-profit companies, government agencies, and landowners.

What should be the response of environmental scientists when the world and the Earth appear to be heading toward exceptional crisis? Some scientists have signed up to public assertions that there indeed could be environmental Armageddon ahead (e.g. Union of Concerned Scientists 1992; US National Academy of Sciences and Royal Society of London 1992). Other scientists proclaim that our most valuable resource is not environmental well-being but professional credibility; the 'cry wolf' risk is the key determinant. Others appear to prefer to be scientists pure and simple, eschewing the policy arena, let alone the political scrum. Still others seem to think that warning of prospective crisis, even warning amongst themselves, is out of protocol's court.

Many nations have recognized the need to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The scientific assessments of climate change of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) support the need to reduce GHG emissions. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the 1992 Convention on Climate Change (UNTS 30822) has now been signed by more than 65 countries, although that Protocol has not yet entered into force. Some 14 of the industrialized countries listed in the Protocol face reductions in carbon dioxide emissions of more than 10% compared to projected 1997 carbon dioxide emissions (Najam & Page 1998).

During the twentieth century the level of the Caspian Sea dropped from -26 m (1930) to -29 m (1977) below global sea level and subsequently rose again to -26.66 m in 1996. We aimed to describe responses of the vegetation in the lower Volga Delta to these substantial sea-level changes using an analysis of historic vegetation maps produced by aerial photography and satellite imagery.

The sea level drop in the earlier part of the century was followed by rapid progression of the vegetation. The subsequent rapid sea-level rise in the 1980s did however not result in similarly rapid regression of the vegetation. This partial irreversibility of the vegetation response to sea-level change is explained by the wide flooding tolerance of the major emergent species, namely Phragmites australis. Floating vegetation increased in extent, most likely due to the increased availability of more favourable conditions, particularly for Nelumbo nucifera, a tropical plant reaching its northernmost distribution in the Volga Delta. This species increased in distribution from 3.5 ha in the 1930s throughout the entire Volga Delta to several thousands of hectares in the Astrakhanskiy Biosphere Reserve alone in the 1980s. The reported sea-level changes swept the ecosystems in the Astrakhanskiy Biosphere Reserve back and forth within the Reserve boundaries. At longer time scales, ten-fold greater sea-level change has been reported. The ecosystems for which the Reserve is renowned might be pushed completely out of the Reserve under these conditions. We therefore question whether the current Reserve will be sufficiently large to guarantee conservation of the biota in the lower Volga Delta at longer time scales.

Conservation programme planning involves allocating a limited budget amongst different potential conservation projects. The selection of projects for funding is subject to a high degree of uncertainty and a number of competing objectives such as ecological protection, recreation and community relations. The purposes of this paper are to summarize the quantitative methods currently used in deciding which conservation projects to fund and to present a general methodology based on decision analysis that can be used for making conservation programme planning decisions. The methodology directly links the proposed contributions of projects to the objectives of the conservation agency, and it includes an explicit consideration of uncertainty and a conversion of ordinal scores into utilities. The methodology is a rational way of making decisions in conservation situations that are characterized by high degrees of uncertainty and subjective information. An application of decision analysis with staff from the New Zealand Department of Conservation is described. Some of the difficulties with using this methodology in practice are discussed in both the New Zealand and broader contexts. The conclusions are that conservation programme planning is currently based on managerial experience and relatively simple scoring procedures, but that a more rational approach based on decision analysis is possible, and additional research would reduce the amount of effort required to use decision analysis for conservation programme planning.

In Spain, it is estimated that 60% of wetlands have disappeared in the last 50 years. The present study aimed to describe the relationships between loss of wetlands and land-use change in Azuaga County, Central-western Iberian Peninsula where during the period 1896-1996, 94% of the original wetlands disappeared. Forest, scrub, holm oak dehesas and olive groves have become fragmented or disappeared completely, having been substituted by eucalyptus plantations in areas of low productivity and by dry cultivation of herbaceous crops, mainly cereals, in more productive areas. These substitutions have resulted in a homogeneous, coarse-grained landscape with low diversity and high dominance. The type of land-use has depended on the evolution of demographic processes, with high human immigration rates toward the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, and high emigration rates during the 1960s and 1970s. The mechanization of agriculture and transition from closed to market economy in the second half of the twentieth century also played an essential role in the landscape changes described.

Numerous national parks have been established worldwide to protect nature, but this has not been without social consequences for neighbouring communities. Since the social and economic vitality of adjacent communities is being recognized more and more as indispensable for the success of conservation objectives, the quality of park-community relations has become a critical issue. A four-year investigation into the social impacts engendered by two national parks situated in the Saguenay region of Quebec (Canada) was conducted, according to a social impact assessment method. Several impacts and changes were identified on resource management, on the local economy, on the tourist industry, on involvement and participation of local actors and on the social organization of the neighbouring communities. The significance of these impacts varied according to the community and the actors involved. The results of the present research point to the determining role of the government in general, and of the park management in particular, in the process of local community development. In this regard, recommendations are addressed to local communities to improve their partnership with national parks.

The >150 islands in north-western México are relatively pristine, but may easily be damaged by unregulated human use. Tourists visit many of these islands, but their numbers and impact are unknown. To examine some of the costs and benefits of ecotourism we sent a questionnaire to 42 ecotourism companies that visit islands in north-western México; 29 respondents reported that tourist days on these islands had increased at >7% yr-1, from <15 000 in 1986 to about 47 000 in 1993. Neither government regulation nor cost of trips were reported to be important impediments to tourism growth. In 1993, ecotourist organizations visiting islands reported spending US$3.7 million, none of which went directly to the protection and management of the islands. We provide several management options to increase the conservation benefits of ecotourism and minimize the negative impacts.

In recent years there has been a proliferation of projects aiming to integrate human development needs with conservation objectives, and to establish mutually beneficial relationships for the management of natural resources between rural communities and the state. This paper presents data from a case study of human-wildlife interactions in villages along the northern boundary of the Selous Game Reserve in south-east Tanzania. Since 1989, this area has been the site of a project working to promote community wildlife management (CWM). Questionnaire survey data were used to examine villagers' conservation attitudes towards wildlife, the Game Reserve, and the activities of the CWM project and state wildlife management authority. Despite local support for the conservation of wildlife, many respondents were either unaware or held negative views of the activities of the wildlife management institutions. Logistic regression analyses show that while access to game meat from the CWM project has had a positive influence on perceptions of wildlife benefits and awareness of the project's activities, it has had no significant effect on local perceptions of the Game Reserve and the activities of the state wildlife management authority. The factors underlying the observed pattern of conservation attitudes were identified as the inequitable distribution of benefits from the CWM project, and the limited nature of community participation in wildlife management. The importance of institutional issues for the future progress of participatory approaches to conservation with development is emphasized.

Because coral reefs are sensitive to land derived inputs of nutrient and sediment, there is concern worldwide for the effects of anthropogenic change in river catchments on reefs. Thirty-one river catchments drain directly into the waters of the Great Barrier Reef, NE Australia. This case study was undertaken on the floodplain of the Herbert River catchment in north Queensland, utilizing remote sensing and GIS to assess both spatial and temporal changes in freshwater wetlands and riparian forests. We demonstrate that there has been a very large reduction in the area of these ecosystems since European settlement in the mid nineteenth century, with an 80% decline in their extent since 1943. We provide a range of quantitative measures to show that the landscape diversity of these ecosystems has also declined. These changes are of importance in terms of regional, national and international trends. We argue that policy, planning and management reform is required if the remaining ecological, economic and social values of these systems and the adjacent Great Barrier Reef Marine Park are to be maintained.