So we're moving into our second module, and we're going to begin focusing on discussions about threats to conservation. So what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and start off by introducing the International Union for Conservation of Nature. So the IUCN. It's an organization that I mentioned at the very beginning for the introduction, but wanted to go ahead and start spending a little bit more time going into some details and kind of talking. We'll begin with a little bit of a history of it, a little bit of the organization, and then we'll move on to kind of what is directly importance of this on the IUCN Red List. All right, so what is the IUCN? It is a membership union, which is comprised of both government and civil organizations. So their vision statement is a just world that values and conserves nature. And to that end, their mission is to influence, encourage, and assist societies to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable. Now I've worked with individuals from the IUCN and obviously have used the IUCN Red List, but really started kind of taking a deeper dive into some of what they've been doing and kind of what their focus and what they're organization really tries to do. And there's some really amazing stuff that is definitely beyond the scope of this particular course. But I think it's worth spending a couple minutes to talk about it. And if any of you guys are greatly encouraged by this, then there's lots of contact information you can easily kind of start to get more involved. Okay, taken right from their web page, is this United For Life And Livelihoods. And what I really like is how you can see all these kind of general interactions. So, be it starting off on the left hand side in this blue so, 1,400 member organizations. State governments and agencies, non governmental organizations, indigenous peoples organizations. So really looking at it from multi-tiered to multi-level perspective of everyone trying to have a voice, everyone coming together and being able to work towards, as they say these SDGs the Sustainable Development Goals. So, from that blue going across policy implication direct from members through IUCN world conservation congresses. Which can go over to the the green sides of policy impacts international, national, and local. Attaining the SDGs and meeting other global challenges, direct benefits to people and nature. Tools, standards, and on the ground projects. And this central kind of teal thing, 15,000 plus experts in six commissions in collaboration with the 900 plus staff and offices in 50 countries. So looking at which ways directions and mandates flow. Looking at which ways influence and action flows, and that it really does kind of help to feed back in and really try to, again, as their vision and mission statement said, really try to improve the world and improve nature around for all. Okay, some brief history on it. It was created in 1948 as the first global environmental union, it was founded in Fontainebleau, France. And for the first couple of decades, the primary focus was to examine human impacts on nature. it kind of went through and continued to refine their focus but began to focus on protection of species and habitats. So again, here's the creation of a global, of an international union to actually take care of and try to protect nature. Began by the simple idea of let's go ahead and let's look at human impacts on nature. Do we see this through industry? Do we see this through agriculture? Do we see it through hunting? What are the kind of things that are going to be affecting it? Then when you actually start going through and say okay, we know that we see these issues, how can we go ahead and start to protect species and protect habitats? So, you start working with local people, you start working with local governments, you start working with national level governments in order to help protect them. And then I realized I put that on there twice, well it's twice as important. It's worth noting twice. In the early and late 2000s, really kind of switched focus to nature based solutions. And here's where it really starts to take a much broader approach to some of it in my mind, in terms of both food and water security. Really kind of trying to address climate change and then also bringing poverty reduction. So it really is this kind of the continuation of work on Paris Climate Change agreements. And there's also the 2030 sustainability development goals, which we'll go into greater detail in a moment. But it's kind of you can look at that idea of how do we go ahead and protect one particular species, and then how do we look at this in terms of either global social justice or in terms of global sustainability? So these much kind of broader higher level topics are what they developed as these sustainable development goals. So it's the 2030 sustainable development agenda and the 17 sustainable development goals that underpin it. And they recognize that the natural world and it's life giving services must be urgently protected if we're to fulfill the needs of 9 billion people by 2050. And really, they are entirely premised on the notion that we cannot solve problems in isolation. So, I'm going to go ahead and list out what their development goals are. And again, far beyond the reach and scope of this particular course. But just giving you guys an idea of what some of these organizations are working towards and what their background and ideas are. So the first one they say is no poverty. Background to it, is they say conserving nature helps maintain the world's natural resources that sustain the world's economies. Particularly important for sectors directly dependent on these resources such as agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. So how can we go ahead and help protect those ones? The second corollary to that is zero hunger. So healthy ecosystems contribute to food security by making food systems more productive and stable in the long term. Okay, so how can we and when we talk about conservation, we talk about hunting, we talk about traditional medicine. A lot of these things are born from poverty. In many instances it is cheaper to poach a primate than it is to or you can make as much money by poaching that one primate as you can by working in some places for an entire year. So that's one way to alleviate poverty. If we have people that are going out and doing subsistence based hunting, then if we can have a way that we are working with agricultural systems to make certain that ecosystems are providing food, that's one way to alleviate hunger in the area. Okay, good health and well being again very, very broad topics and categorizations here, but it could be anywhere from green spaces in urban areas to improve mental and physical health and well being. It can be ways to help out rural and coastal populations. It can be a way to really kind of assuage the issues with malnutrition. Gender equality. Gender equality and women's empowerment and matters of fundamental human rights and social justice. So it's one of those we want full and equitable participation of women in social and economic life, essential to nature, conservation, and sustainable development. So again these very, very broad-reaching goals overall. Okay, clean water and sanitation. We've got pollution, we've got deforestation, we have climate change. All these are going to have devastating impacts on ecosystems. So how can we actually maintain clean water and clean sanitation, which is something that is, I mean we struggle with clean water here in the United States. Many of these issues and it's something that we need to continue to focus on, are not problems that are over there. We have many of these same issues. And if we look at it, it's a global system. How can we help with all these issues? Okay, reduced inequalities. Unequal allocation, management and access to natural resources create economic inequalities between individuals and groups within and among countries. So again, these are definitely global problems, how can we start to work to form sustainable answers to these questions? Okay sustainable cities and communities. So, as cities continue to expand into natural areas, the urgent need to secure the continued delivery of benefits through appropriate urban planning and management approaches. National Geographic had a great article within the last couple years, that was showing this interface between villages in parts of Africa. So in chimpanzee territory, and chimps coming into direct contact. So we've got disease transmission. We've got crop breeding, we've got hunting, we've got chimpanzees attacking humans, humans attacking chimpanzees. How can we form sustainable cities and communities within these settings? Okay, climate action. So this is where we can start talking about natural carbon sinks and how the fact that healthy ecosystems can help vulnerable communities adapt to the adverse effects of climate change and other protection against climate-related disasters. We saw this in New Orleans as example of areas that had not been protected. And we get greater levels of climate action, we get hurricanes that have greater levels of force and damage. And instead of having some of these protected areas that used to act as a natural buffer, we are suddenly going to be hit with these much larger storms with areas that are no longer particularly protected. Miami, Florida is another great example of a city that is rapidly being inundated by water. Okay, life below water. Over 3 billion people depend on coastal marine biodiversity for food and income. But we are going to continue to degree these habitats and destroy these food resources. So how do we go ahead and help to protect a number of these species in a number of these areas? Okay life on land. This is where we can talk about species extinction below the water as well but species extinction and extinction rates are accelerating. So we're seeing lots of change to land. So we've got about 30% of land is degraded, which is leading to declines in agricultural productivity and outputs. So not only are we looking at degradation of natural habitats for animals, but we're also looking at degradations of agricultural lands in order to help sustain this burgeoning population of humans. Okay, peace, justice, and strong institutions. And I love how they very succinctly effective and just institutions are necessary for tackling environmental challenges, including the degradation of ecosystems and climate change. We need strong governance, we need to follow rules, we need to have conservation accords, that are not only put into place but that are actively followed. So trying to work towards this greater level of transparency. And then finally this kind of partnership for the goals. So strong partnerships between governments, donors, the private sector and local communities are necessary to conserve ecosystems and the services and benefits they provide to support humans and wildlife. As I concluded in one of our last lectures, it definitely needs to be a partnership. Everyone needs to be working together to try to come up with these goals, to have a place at the table and to make certain that these are conversations and not dictates and dictums from somewhere else or on up high kind of thing. So, incredible list of development goals. It is always one of those encouraging seeing, encouraging to read and trying to figure out how we can be a part of it in order to help affect these changes. Okay, so our next video within this module is going to be the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. So it's going to be how we categorize threats. And we'll discuss different threat levels to species. So when someone says, that's an endangered animal, we'll be able to understand why it is listed as such and how they came about that categorization level. So that's coming up next.
