The third meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP-3) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) concluded with the signing of the Kyoto Protocol (UNFCCC 1997). After much political wrangling and an extended all night negotiation session, delegates agreed to a Protocol that mandates specific emissions limits for industrialized countries and economies in transition (collectively listed as Annex I countries). The Protocol mandates that the average anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emission of each Annex I country should be no more than its agreed allowance in the ‘first quantified emission limitation commitment period’ which is defined as the five years between the beginning of 2008 and the end of 2012 (UNFCCC 1997, Article 3.7). The base-period for most countries in Annex I is 1990. The exceptions, which were granted during COP-2 (UNFCCC 1996, decision 9/CP.2), are Bulgaria (1989), Hungary (1985-87), Poland (1988) and Romania (1989).

Impact of human action is being felt in all ecosystems. Traditionally, urban landscapes and agricultural fields have been considered to be dominated by humans, but human alteration has also been substantial in tropical forests. The common forms of acute forest disturbance are ones that involve logging selectively or clear-cutting, allowing forest to regenerate by natural means. In contrast to the acute forms of disturbance, the chronic form of disturbance, which is subtle and slowly creeping, but equally destructive, is a much less-recognized problem. In the chronic form of disturbance people remove only a small fraction of forest biomass at a given time, generally as head-loads of firewood, or in the form of fodder, leaf litter and other non-timber forest products (NTFPs). The problem with the chronic form of forest disturbance is that plants or ecosystems often do not get time to recover adequately, because the human onslaught never stops, and can cause adverse changes in the forest, even if rates of biomass removal are within the carrying capacity of the forest. In a similar fashion, the cumulative effects of low but chronic exposure to air pollution are now cause for concern all over the planet (Pitelka 1994). In the case of chronic forest disturbance, the effect somewhat resembles that of persistent insect herbivory at a moderate scale. Fuelwood, which is still the main source of cooking energy in most developing countries, is reported to be in under supply for 1.4 thousand million people, and these may rise to 2.5 thousand million by 2010 (Food and Agriculture Organization 1994). Therefore, more areas are likely to come under regimes of chronic disturbance in the next century.

In their paper on environmental carrying capacity, Brown et al. (1997) describe some of the negative impacts of tourism development and propose the carrying capacity framework for addressing these impacts. Though we agree that these impacts should be addressed, we feel that the carrying capacity approach is inadequate for the task in most situations. An examination of the steps that are necessary for establishing a carrying capacity illustrates why this is the case (further discussion is provided in Lindberg et al. 1997).

Vandergeest (1996) suggested that the protected area (PA) system in Thailand is too large. He proposed that the state should recognize claims to private property rights within the PA system and subject remaining lands to collective property rights where villagers would be allowed to burn, cut and graze for commercial purposes. We disagree and summarize some of our concerns below.

A model of disturbance equilibration

The contemporary ‘non-equilibrium’ paradigm in ecology acknowledges that ecosystems and their component floral and faunal communities show historic dynamism, not unchanging constancy (Shugart & West 1981; Pickett et al. 1992; Hengeveld 1994). In formulating a hierarchical view of landscape ecology, Urban et al. (1987) modelled broad classes of forest disturbances and corresponding landscape scales. A reference level is the scale at which a disturbance is observed as an ‘interesting event’. At the next, lower landscape scale the disturbance has a significant impact and explanatory mechanisms may be investigated. At the level above the reference scale, the ‘event’ may be viewed in a broader ecological context where its impact has been buffered and successfully incorporated. Urban et al. (1987) suggested that ‘a disturbance regime that can be incorporated is not disturbing at all’. Extending this perspective to anthropogenic perturbations, Urban et al. (1987) praised the ‘wisdom’ of foresters for discovering clear-cut harvesting as a forest management strategy that mimics natural disturbances. It might be possible for a reader with a pro-exploitation agenda to misinterpret the meaning of the model presented in Urban et al. (1987) and attempt to use it in support of forest management that is destructive to overall ecosystem health, thereby detracting from Urban et al.'s (1987) and Shugart and West's (1981) pioneering contributions to the field of landscape ecology. It could be argued that we only need look to a higher landscape scale in the model of equilibration to find a level at which clear-cuts need no longer be considered forest disturbances.

The Comment by Lindberg and McCool (1998) makes a useful contribution to the debate on carrying capacity and reaffirms the observations and conclusions of our original paper, which include the fact that carrying capacity may be conceptually controversial, is problematic in its application and is of limited use in devising policy guidelines (Brown et al. 1997).

A significant factor contributing to deforestation is the expanding human populations' increasing demands on forests and forest products. In many areas, rural households rely solely on fuelwood collected from the forest for their domestic energy supply. Fuel-saving stoves, or improved cook-stoves, have been introduced to reduce fuelwood consumption and thus alleviate deforestation, but there is frequently little or no formal monitoring and evaluation of programmes; their success as both a development and a resource-conservation tool is therefore undetermined. A programme was implemented in communities surrounding two national parks in western Uganda to compare domestic fuelwood consumption of an improved cook-stove and the traditional cooking fire, and assess the attitudes of stove users and non-users towards the improved stove and resource conservation. A kitchen performance test conducted in 100 households in Kiziba, Kahangi and Matayisa/Bundinyama parishes showed that fuelwood consumption did not differ significantly between improved and traditional stoves under actual field conditions. Household surveys showed that respondents in all three parishes had positive perceptions of the improved cook-stove. Perceived advantages of the improved stove included the ability to cook more than one item at once, fuelwood savings, quick cooking, and smoke/accident reduction. Many problems cited with the stove were technical, such as chimney malfunctions and pot-holes being too large or small to accommodate cooking pots. Cost of the stove was the primary reason for non-adoption. Improved-stove users were more concerned with forest conservation than were non-users. The need for monitoring and evaluation of improved-stove programmes is strongly indicated if they are to continue to be implemented as tools for resource conservation.

There is debate world-wide over urbanization, structured planning, deforestation and land management; these issues are no less important in Saudi Arabia.

State tenure of traditionally protected lands in Saudi Arabia has created gaps in the protection of the ecosystem and control of urbanization that indigenous peoples can fill. The present situation has emerged since 1932 when local control of resources was lost in the drive to unify the Kingdom politically. An alternative to the practised system of land management and planning is proposed. The alternative is that which recognizes indigenous people as potential stewards of the vernacular landscape and it may play a leading role in the conservation and management of the highlands of the south-western region of Saudi Arabia.

To strengthen the 1993 Law of Regions which aimed at improving the standard of administrative work and development in the Kingdom will require the establishment of a new relationship between indigenous people, scientists and national governmental organizations. In this, indigenous peoples should have juridical recognition and control over large areas of forests around their settlements in exchange for a commitment to conserve the ecosystem and protect biodiversity. In essence, such an outcome may offer the integration of two knowledge systems into an innovative resource-management strategy and land-conservation plans.

Natural resource planning theory now accepts that laypersons may acquire scientifically correct knowledge of nature by informal means and that sense of place, or ecological identity, motivates citizens to assume personal responsibility for their own bioregion. Previous research has identified childhood foraging, that is, searching for and using wild plants and animals of distinguishable kinds, as one informal means by which citizens learn about local ecosystems, but ethnographic evidence suggests foraging may also contribute substantially to the development of ecological identity. Does foraging reflect the ecological characteristics of local bioregions closely enough to structure ecological identity in industrial populations too? By way of addressing this question, studies were conducted to test predictions about the foraging repertoires of people growing up in two separate, but related, bioregions of Canada, centred on Niagara and Ottawa respectively. The most important of these predictions were, first, that regional patterns of foraging experience would correspond to regional ecological patterns, and second, that foraging repertoires would evince within-region similarities and between-region differences. Results confirm that the childhood foraging experience of ordinary Canadian citizens responds to important ecological parameters at the regional scale and in so doing constitutes an aspect of place-specific culture. These findings have a bearing on conservation policy, particularly for multicultural societies.

Participation by local communities in management is widely considered a means of sustaining protected areas. In parts of the world with a history of armed conflict, the chances of such an approach being successfully adopted might seem remote. One such area is the Maputo Elephant Reserve in southern Mozambique. The aim was to improve understanding of the local people's use of natural resources and perceptions of the Reserve's impact. Interviews and questionnaires distributed in four different villages were used to estimate the relative value of these resources in relation to the attitude of the local people towards the Reserve. The people gave a relative value rank for each specific use of each plant, animal and fish resource. On average 60% of the households exploited more than two different resource categories. The plant resources of the Reserve were used by 71% of the households and were valued more highly than animal and fish resources. Plants were used for many purposes; construction material, fuelwood and fruits had the highest relative values. Antelopes, hippopotamus and elephants were valued highest amongst a range of animal species which were hunted by 21% of households. Amongst uses of animals, consumption, use of the skins and commercial sale of the meat were especially important. When asked if they liked the Reserve, 88% of respondents answered positively. The attitude towards the Reserve was correlated with crop damage experiences; people with crop damage caused by elephants, hippos or bushpigs, were more negative. Attitude of respondents was inversely related to the number of species invading their agricultural fields. Resource use intensity, use purpose, resource value and attitude were different amongst sites and dependent on site-specific circumstances, different management strategies could be necessary for the four sites. A resource management plan should be drawn up, local people should be included in the management team and steps should be taken to improve the relationship between the Reserve's authorities and the local population generally.

'Sustainable use' of wildlife resources and 'community based conservation' are two themes recurrent in contemporary statements of wildlife conservation policy, and their use is in response to a perceived 'deep conservation crisis' which has in part arisen from exclusionary and restrictive conservation practices. The extent to which the legal harvest of marine turtle eggs in Ostional, Costa Rica, is an example of sustainable use and community based conservation is evaluated in this paper. Field research using in-depth interviewing and a household questionnaire was undertaken in Ostional during 1994 and 1995, to investigate local perceptions of the egg harvesting project, both positive and negative. Socio-economic benefits from, and legal and administrative structures supporting, the project were found to be fundamental to community support for a limited egg harvest and allowed for community participation in, and control of, resource use. Participation and control were key to local support for conservation of nesting marine turtles and their eggs. Attempts to use wildlife sustainably must be considered on a case by case basis, to account for the biological nature of the wildlife resource and environment in question and for local socio-economic, political and historical conditions. Nevertheless, some of the lessons learned from the attempt to implement sustainable use and community based conservation in Ostional may be more widely generalized, and may help inform other efforts to reconcile wildlife conservation objectives with local development needs.

The emergence of commercial aquaculture in estuaries along the coast of Karnataka, India, has resulted in the breakdown of traditional methods of resource management and adverse impacts on the coastal environment. Based on field survey, personal discussions and published literature, we analyzed the evolution of different market (economic), traditional, and regulatory institutions governing the use of estuarine resources in the study area over the last three decades, and identified the environmental and social impacts of this evolution. In the past, informal associations of farmers in the estuarine floodplains had managed lands for raising crops and brackish-water fish in a sustainable way. In recent years, under economic and political pressures, landowners leased their lands to commercial shrimp-producers. A rapid growth in the production of commercial shrimp, employment of unsustainable production technologies, and laxity in environmental regulation have caused negative ecological and economic impacts on communities dependent on estuarine resources. Through a recent order from the Indian Supreme Court, environmentalists and the affected communities have sought to ban commercial aquaculture in ecologically-sensitive areas. While this court order awaits implementation, several policy options are here suggested for local, state and central governments in India in order to protect the estuarine environment.

The Picos de Europa are representative of the diverse cultural landscapes of Spain that are currently threatened by changes in traditional management practices. They contain the first national park to be declared in Europe, and, although this has recently been extended, there is no policy to support the traditional agricultural practices that maintain the landscape. The Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) scheme in Britain is described in order to provide an appropriate policy background within which the ecological characteristics of the region could be maintained. The general background to the environment of the region is then described, with its unique interactions amongst limestone rock, climate, species and anthropogenic influences that have produced a complex cultural landscape. A statistical classification of the region was constructed which, in conjunction with a field survey, enabled the ecological resources to be assessed, and also identified the principal threats to the character of the region. It is suggested that ESA-style legislation could provide a valuable policy instrument to encourage maintenance of the cultural landscape and some appropriate prescriptions are proposed for this purpose.

Many coral reefs in the Caribbean, and elsewhere, have undergone changes from hard coral to fleshy algal dominance over the past two decades which has often been interpreted as a localized response to eutrophication and fishing. Here, data on the abundance of hard corals and algae from lagoonal patch reefs distributed throughout a large (260 km2) remote reef atoll located approximately 30 km offshore from the sparsely-populated coast of Belize, Central America, are compared with a study of these patch reefs conducted 25 years previously. Data and observations indicate that these patch reefs have undergone a major change in their ecology associated with a 75% reduction in total hard coral, a 99% loss in the cover of Acropora cervicornis and A. palmata, and a 315% increase in algae, which are mostly erect brown algae species in the genera Lobophora, Dictyota, Turbinaria and Sargassum. Such changes have been reported from other Caribbean reefs during the 1980s, but not on such a remote reef and the present changes may be attributed primarily to both a disease that began killing Acropora in this region in the mid 1980s and a reduction in herbivory. The low level of herbivory may be attributable to the disease-induced loss of the sea urchin Diadema antillarum in 1983, or fishing of herbivorous fishes, but both explanations are speculative. The present density of fisherfolk is low, and their efforts are not targetted at herbivorous fishes, and population densities of D. antillarum 14 years after the mortality are <1 individual per 1000 m2, but there is no comparative data from before the die off. There is, however, no indication that these major changes occurred on the fore reef, because A. palmata is abundant and erect algal abundance is low. We suggest that reported changes in other Caribbean reefs are not necessarily or exclusively influenced by local human factors such as localized intense eutrophication or fishing.

Community-based conservation (CBC) has been projected as the most practical approach to stem biodiversity loss in developing countries. Since CBC is 'people-centred' and experience with it is relatively new, it is important to know the views of local communities regarding implemented policies and programmes. This paper examines the attitudes of local communities toward policy and programmes implemented by a project under the CBC approach in the Makalu-Barun National Park and Conservation Area of Nepal, based on a 1996 survey of 400 people living in it.

Overall, respondents did not have a particularly favourable perception of the community development programmes implemented. Strong support existed for ecotourism development in the Conservation Area. Respondents overwhelmingly endorsed community forestry. Wildlife protection remained a low priority amongst a significant majority of respondents. Some demographic and socio-economic factors exerted important influences on the attitudes of respondents. This study suggests that the project should continue addressing local development needs, encourage women's participation in community forestry, work toward dispute settlement of community forest-user groups, and allow hunting of pest wild animals, if it wants to win the support of local communities for long-term biodiversity conservation goals.