Global urbanization is proceeding at an alarming rate and is threatening the long-term survival of many important biological resources. Planners in the City of Durban (South Africa), cognizant of this impending environmental crisis, have designed an urban open-space network aimed at preserving a representative and functional example of the previous indigenous landscapes now under threat as a result of development.

Biogeographical principles have been used to produce for Durban a system characterized by maximized reserve size, continuity, and overall minimized system linearity with the lowest edge-to-area ratio possible. Emphasis has also been placed on economic viability and on the importance of community acceptance and participation within the system.

Designing appropriate policies and strategies that lead to environmental conservation (of biological diversity and natural ecosystems) and ecologically sustainable development, is not an option but a necessity. Nevertheless, it requires an appropriate developmental paradigm that can provide a more relevant perceptual and interpretive framework from which such strategies may emerge. The prevailing dominant social paradigm has ignored the following problems: the present level of resource consumption in the developed industrialized countries, the acute poverty and inequitable development pattern in the Third World, the massive capital flight from ‘global’ South to ‘global’ North, and the massive population growth-rates in poor Third World countries, for political or ideological reasons. This paradigm will ultimately lead to environmental destruction and collapse of The Biosphere if ‘business’ continues ‘as usual’.

There has been unwillingness on the part of the politicians to admit this truth, but the development philosophy that does not include the strategies which can induce changes in our consumption and behavioural patterns, attitudes towards Nature, environmentally sound conservation and management practices and principles, elimination of poverty and inequity, and reduction of global population growth, will achieve nothing more than, as Morowitz (1991) calls it, a ‘Sisyphus's Myth’.

Only a development paradigm that is deeply rooted in the principle of cooperation, social synergism, equity, and the understanding of ecological and social sustainability of resource uses, allocation, and management, can offer hope and engender optimism. The sooner humanity realizes and acts on this, the greater will be the chance for environmental conservation and the lesser will be the cost of human adaptation.

The ecological problems, including degradation of fragile ecosystems, of the Himalaya are quite conspicuous. A rapid depletion of forest resources is the main cause of environmental degradation and economic deterioration. Watersheds are considered as a unit for natural resource management and development in hilly areas; therefore a case-study of Mamlay watershed of Sikkim is presented in this paper.

The Mamley watershed presents a viable system having a gradient of altitude where almost all types of land-uses that are common in the eastern Himalaya are found. All the ethno-cultural groups of Sikkim are present in this watershed, although the agricultural sector provides the main land-use, followed by forestry. Most of the forested areas in the Himalaya have been purportedly destroyed for the expansion of agricultural land. A similar situation was experienced in the Mamlay watershed, where an increase of 12.79% of the land-area used for agriculture has been recorded in the past 40 years. The watershed being fragile, 62% of the area is under intensive agricultural practice. Land-use and spatial relationships in the perspective of conservation are presented in this paper.

Great genetic diversity of agricultural crops and trees has been recorded in this small watershed. Conservation ethics of optimum utilization/production of the resources, following traditional practices without much degrading of the system which is believed to be sustainable, was practised earlier in the watershed. But recently, due to population pressure and fragmentation of farm-owning families, the balance of land-use, natural resource utilization, and conservation, has become perturbed. Examples of traditional adaptation, indigenous knowledge, and perception of conservation amongst farm-owning families, are also presented in the paper.

Jordan faces a wide variety of environmental problems, most of which are attributable to the inherent water supply–demand imbalance. This paper has examined the broad range of environmental problems experienced by Jordan, including local, regional, and global, environmental threats. Economic costs of ignoring environmental problems are presented, with examples showing how expensive and how complicated decontamination may be. The paper then discusses current policymaking to counter the existing problems and recommended that future decision-making mechanisms be flexible, robust, and timely enough to be able to cope effectively and rapidly with the evergrowing environmental problems.

In conclusion, the paper offers some suggestions for how the process of environmental policymaking may be improved and accelerated in order to cope with the wide range of environmental problems facing Jordan. The paper recommends that scientists and researchers become more involved in governmental decision-making, to be able to establish more technically-informed policies than hitherto. In addition, some type of concessional financing may be necessary from multilateral and bilateral lending organizations to assist in overcoming some of the more threatening environmental problems, such as water quality, and to provide economic impetus to a depressed economy.

Acacia trees form a principal element of desert plant communities in Egypt's Southeastern Desert. They are widespread in remote desert areas but sparse near settlements and urban areas as a result of human impact. However, sustainable use of Acacia trees remains an important component in the livelihood of nomadic people living in remote desert areas.

The present paper discusses the economic and ecological value of Acacia trees in the Wadi Allaqi basin. The total population of Acacia trees in this area is estimated at approximately 13,000 trees. What will be the fate of this population, from which the annual production of charcoal amounts to 10–15 tons? The present work attempts to answer this question by analysing the economic system of the local nomadic population and the ecological characteristics of Acacia trees, coming to reasonably optimistic conclusions.

As in other former British colonies, the earliest protected areas in Peninsular Malaysia were game reserves. There were twenty protected areas at the end of the colonial period (1957), and twenty-five in 1992. The outstanding achievement of the colonial period was the creation of King George V National Park (now Taman Negara), but unfortunately too much reliance was subsequently placed upon it. Protected areas were established in economically undesirable or (formerly) remote areas, largely on an ad hoc basis and mainly as a kind of ‘residual’ land-use. The protected areas have long suffered from rescissions, excisions, and encroachments, primarily for three reasons: because commercial interests have always prevailed; because of insecurity of land tenure; and because ordinary people have been denied a stake in such areas.

I estimate that the ‘effective’ protected-area coverage in 1992 was probably no greater than that of about AD 1940 (when, unlike the situation today, most of the Peninsula still remained forested). The Malaysian states have been reluctant to create new protected areas, and the federal government has been unwilling to invoke certain of its constitutional powers in order to acquire state lands for national parks. Consequently, proposals for additional protected areas have produced few results. Yet owing to the rapid pace of anthropogenic forest change, the Peninsula is running out of potential sites for new protected ares.

Reserved forests comprise virtually all of the Peninsula's remaining forest cover (see Fig. 1). Set aside mainly for productive and protective purposes, it is these forests, not the protected areas, that harbour most of the region's wildlife. This being the case, and keeping in mind that almost all of the wild species are forest-dwelling, it follows that wildlife conservation must come to rely more and more heavily on the reserved forests. Studies conducted by Johns (e.g. 1983, 1986, 1987) at Sungai Tekam, Pahang, on the impact of logging on wildlife, reveal that most species can adapt to the altered conditions of logged forests; or, more precisely, that this appears to be the case following a single logging operation. But this topic, interesting and important as it is, takes us beyond the scope of this paper.

The matter of species adaptability, however, brings to mind a more general theme, which is the need to implement the principles of conservation everywhere, not just in specially protected areas. There is, in short, no effective alternative to rational land-use planning and to making conservation an integral part of all production processes.

A study of the status of Common Property Resources (CPRs) in the coastal areas of Orissa, India, was made during 1989–90 to investigate privatization of land and its socio-economic implications for the rural poor.

The proportion of CPR land to the total area of the villages was 20%, and the persons per hectare of CPR land numbered 70. High density of population in these areas imparts tremendous pressure on the natural resources. The area of the CPR lands in the villages has declined by 40% since ad 1950.

The main cause of decline of CPRs is privatization. Transfer of CPR land to poor people through various social welfare programmes for their private use, and illegal occupation of the CPR land leading to subsequent legalization, were two important factors which resulted in large-scale privatization. The rural poor depend on CPRs for food, fodder, and fuel, in a variety of ways. Due to privatization, they have collectively lost a significant part of their source of livelihood in recent years.

A field experiment was conducted to define minimum values of irradiance (i.e. light reaching the forest floor) and exposed mineral soil required for non-forest species to become established in deciduous forest in Southern Canada. Three logging intensities (0%, 33%, and 66%, of tree basal-area removed) were combined with three plot sizes (0.01, 0.05, and 0.20 ha) to create a range of values of irradiance and exposed mineral soil. The total number of non-forest species that became established during the first three years after logging was recorded.

Non-forest species invaded experimental plots only when irradiance was at least 8% of incident light. There was no single minimum area of exposed mineral soil required for invasion. A few non-forest species became established even in the absence of exposed mineral soil where penetrating irradiance was 8% or greater. More non-forest species became established as irradiance and the amount of exposed mineral soil increased.

Logging increased both irradiance and the amount of exposed mineral soil. Only a small amount of logging (e.g. 33% removal of tree basal-area from a 0.01 ha plot) would be compatible with the conservation objective of preventing invasion by undesirable non-forest species.