July 30, 2008

World Resources Institute’s Release of the World Resources Report

The World Resources Report has long been a source of data and inspiration for researchers and practitioners focused on environmental management for local livelihoods and sustainability. IASC members have dedicated their attention to bettering the livelihoods of resource dependent populations engaged in the collective management and use of the commons around them. This year’s WRR report is dedicated improving the livelihoods of the most marginal.

Below is World Resources Institute’s announcement for the new 2008 report.


Strengthening the Poor’s Roots of Resilience

The newly-released World Resources 2008: Roots of Resilience report charts a path for how sustainable, nature-based enterprise can help the world’s 2 billion rural poor escape the cycle of poverty.

Today, 2.6 billion people live on less than $2 a day. 75 percent of people at the bottom of the economic pyramid live in rural areas and are dependent on natural resources for some or all of their subsistence. The rural poor face even tougher challenges ahead, as climate change threatens to destroy the ecosystems and natural resources on which they depend.

But World Resources 2008 finds that well-designed, community-based sustainable enterprises can improve the way the rural poor draw from their area’s natural resources. Ultimately, these programs can make their communities more resilient against climate change and the other economic, social, environmental challenges they will face.

World Resources 2008 was produced by the World Resources Institute (WRI), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank.

The publication (PDF) is available online at:
http://www.wri.org/publication/world-resources-2008-roots-of-resilience.

Hardcopies can be purchased at:
http://www.wristore.com/wore20unweof.html

July 22, 2008

CONFERENCE PHOTOS ON FLICKR


As announced at the closing session of the conference last week, we now have a Flickr group to share photos from conferences and of commons issues. If you are already using Flickr, join the group at http://flickr.com/groups/777619@N25/ and contribute your photos.

If you are not using Flickr (http://flickr.com/) yet, but are interested in joining the group, you can sign in though Yahoo. If you do not have a Yahoo account, you can create one here. Once your account is created you can upload your photos to your own site and connect with other users to see their photos. To join the IASC group and to add your photos to the group photo pool, go to http://flickr.com/groups/777619@N25/ and click on “Join this group”.

The site is very self-explanatory, but if you do need help, you can take a tour that explains how the site works (http://flickr.com/tour/). To make uploading of photos easier there are a number of software tools you can use.

Lastly, if you are concerned about copyright, note, that you can determine what level of rights you want to grant viewers for each photo from “all rights reserved” to a fairly open creative commons license. You can also keep photos private, so they are visible only to you or your friends or family).

I am looking forward to seeing many of your conference photos.

Best,

Stephan