The News Archive | Geology, Ecosystems and Biodiversity

Ecosystems and biodiversity provide basic goods and services that are crucial for reducing poverty and economic development; their sustainable management is at the interface of scientific, environmental, societal and development issues. The Earth sciences hold key answers to the challenges we must overcome to preserve our environment and develop sustainable.

The Earth sciences are essential to understanding current global change, to helping us sustain the Earth, and to giving countries the capacity to manage their mineral resources. The International Geosciences Programme (IGCP) promotes international collaboration in the geological sciences with special emphasis on projects and geoscientists from developing countries. It promotes concrete projects with a clear societal orientation for sustainable development, including natural disaster mitigation, medical geology and mineral and groundwater resource extraction. Since its inception in 1972 more than 340 international cooperation projects on the Earth’s geology in about 150 countries have contributed to building knowledge on geological resources and processes and to creating networks of geoscientists.

A better understanding of the Earth is also essential for preserving the diversity of life and sustaining the future of human society. Human beings are an integral part of the Earth’s biosphere. For more than 40 years the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) programme has been concerned with the interface of human activity and the rest of the biosphere, or the relationship between humans and nature. Through the World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR), over 600 biosphere reserves in around 120 countries site-specific examples of how humans live with nature in a sustainable way, are highlighted and promoted.

Biosphere reserves demonstrate ways to safeguard natural ecosystems and biodiversity through science, education and participatory approaches while at the same time promoting innovative economic development that is environmentally sustainable and socially and culturally appropriate. MAB focuses on specific ecosystems in biosphere reserves including mountains, dry lands, tropical forests, urban systems, wetlands, and marine, island and coastal systems. Biosphere reserves are increasingly used as pilot sites for testing mitigation and adaptation to climate change, green economies and as sites for collaboration with other international innovative environmental initiatives.

Biodiversity loss, along with climate change, is one of the great global challenges of our time. The UNESCO Biodiversity Initiative (UBI) launched in 2011 aims to bring UNESCO’s knowledge and networks in the areas of education, the natural, social and human sciences, culture and communication to enrich the international policy response to the biodiversity crisis. It federates UNESCO’s work on biodiversity across disciplines. This multidisciplinary UNESCO perspective to the biodiversity crisis contributes to the recently established Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in which UNESCO participates. IPBES aims to provide accurate, impartial and up-to-date science to inform policy decisions and biodiversity conventions just as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides for the climate change conventions.

14 May 2020	Cultural diversity and COVID-19, UNESCO’s ResiliArt debate focuses on the road to recovery
7 August 2019	Uzbekistan intends to establish its first aspiring UNESCO Global Geopark
3 May 2019	UNESCO hosts governments, experts and stakeholders for major global biodiversity meeting
26 April 2019	UNESCO promotes heritage-based tourism in Almaty region
26 March 2019	UNESCO promotes tourism development in Zhambyl region
22 October 2018	UNESCO/Japan Young Researchers’ Fellowship Programme: call for applications
30 July 2018	Twenty-four new sites join UNESCO’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves
11 February 2018	11 February: International Day of Women and Girls in Science
16 January 2018	Call for members to join the Council of the International Geoscience Programme
13 October 2017	2017 MAB Youth Forum
26 October 2016	Biosphere reserves of South and Central Asia were discussed in Almaty
14 April 2016	The V International Student Forum “Green Bridge through Generations”
1 October 2015	UNESCO MAB Young Scientists Awards: call for applications
24 June 2015	Contemporary art at the Ile-Alatau National Park
25 January 2011	Celebrating Chemistry in 2011 scheduled for 27-28 January

Geology, Ecosystems and Biodiversity

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