We investigate whether income inequality affects subsequent growth in a cross-country sample for 1965-90, using the models of Barro (1997), Bleaney and Nishiyama (2002) and Sachs and Warner (1997), with negative results. We then investigate the evolution of income inequality over the same period and its correlation with growth. The dominating feature is inequality convergence across countries. This convergence has been significantly faster amongst developed countries. Growth does not appear to influence the evolution of inequality over time. Outline

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/81822/1/02-28.pdf

Economic growth and income inequality

Fisheries have rarely been 'sustainable'. Rather, fishing has induced serial depletions, long masked by improved technology, geographic expansion and exploitation of previously spurned species lower in the food web. With global catches declining since the late 1980s, continuation of present trends will lead to supply shortfall, for which aquaculture cannot be expected to compensate, and may well exacerbate. Reducing fishing capacity to appropriate levels will require strong reductions of subsidies. Zoning the oceans into unfished marine reserves and areas with limited levels of fishing effort would allow sustainable fisheries, based on resources embedded in functional, diverse ecosystems.

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Towards sustainability in world fisheries

Background A principal function of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is to “perform regular and timely assessments of knowledge on biodiversity.” In December 2013, its second plenary session approved a program to begin a global assessment in 2015. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and five other biodiversity-related conventions have adopted IPBES as their science-policy interface, so these assessments will be important in evaluating progress toward the CBD’s Aichi Targets of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020. As a contribution toward such assessment, we review the biodiversity of eukaryote species and their extinction rates, distributions, and protection. We document what we know, how it likely differs from what we do not, and how these differences affect biodiversity statistics. Interestingly, several targets explicitly mention “known species”—a strong, if implicit, statement of incomplete knowledge. We start by asking how many species are known and how many remain undescribed. We then consider by how much human actions inflate extinction rates. Much depends on where species are, because different biomes contain different numbers of species of different susceptibilities. Biomes also suffer different levels of damage and have unequal levels of protection. How extinction rates will change depends on how and where threats expand and whether greater protection counters them. Different visualizations of species biodiversity. ( A ) The distributions of 9927 bird species. ( B ) The 4964 species with smaller than the median geographical range size. ( C ) The 1308 species assessed as threatened with a high risk of extinction by BirdLife International for the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. ( D ) The 1080 threatened species with less than the median range size. (D) provides a strong geographical focus on where local conservation actions can have the greatest global impact. Additional biodiversity maps are available at www.biodiversitymapping.org. Advances Recent studies have clarified where the most vulnerable species live, where and how humanity changes the planet, and how this drives extinctions. These data are increasingly accessible, bringing greater transparency to science and governance. Taxonomic catalogs of plants, terrestrial vertebrates, freshwater fish, and some marine taxa are sufficient to assess their status and the limitations of our knowledge. Most species are undescribed, however. The species we know best have large geographical ranges and are often common within them. Most known species have small ranges, however, and such species are typically newer discoveries. The numbers of known species with very small ranges are increasing quickly, even in well-known taxa. They are geographically concentrated and are disproportionately likely to be threatened or already extinct. We expect unknown species to share these characteristics. Current rates of extinction are about 1000 times the background rate of extinction. These are higher than previously estimated and likely still underestimated. Future rates will depend on many factors and are poised to increase. Finally, although there has been rapid progress in developing protected areas, such efforts are not ecologically representative, nor do they optimally protect biodiversity. Outlook Progress on assessing biodiversity will emerge from continued expansion of the many recently created online databases, combining them with new global data sources on changing land and ocean use and with increasingly crowdsourced data on species’ distributions. Examples of practical conservation that follow from using combined data in Colombia and Brazil can be found at www.savingspecies.org and www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3zjeJW2NVk.

The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection

I Genesis, God blesses human beings and bids us to take dominion over the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, and every other living thing. We are entreated to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth, and subdue it (Gen. 1:28). The bad news, and the good news, is that we have almost succeeded. There is little debate in scientific circles about the importance of human influence on ecosystems. According to scientists’ reports, we appropriate over 40% of the net primary productivity (the green material) produced on Earth each year (Vitousek et al. 1986, Rojstaczer et al. 2001). We consume 35% of the productivity of the oceanic shelf (Pauly and Christensen 1995), and we use 60% of freshwater run-off (Postel et al. 1996). The unprecedented escalation in both human population and consumption in the 20th century has resulted in environmental crises never before encountered in the history of humankind and the world (McNeill 2000). E. O. Wilson (2002) claims it would now take four Earths to meet the consumption demands of the current human population, if every human consumed at the level of the average US inhabitant. The influence of human beings on the planet has become so pervasive that it is hard to find adults in any country who have not seen the environment around them reduced in natural values during their lifetimes—woodlots converted to agriculture, agricultural lands converted to suburban development, suburban development converted to urban areas. The cumulative effect of these many local changes is the global phenomenon of human influence on nature, a new geological epoch some call the “anthropocene” (Steffen and Tyson 2001). Human influence is arguably the most important factor affecting life of all kinds in today’s world (Lande 1998, Terborgh 1999, Pimm 2001, UNEP 2001). Yet despite the broad consensus among biologists about the importance of human influence on nature, this phenomenon and its implications are not fully appreciated by the larger human community, which does not recognize them in its economic systems (Hall et al. 2001) or in most of its political decisions (Soulé and Terborgh 1999, Chapin et al. 2000). In part, this lack of appreciation may be due to scientists’ propensity to express themselves in terms like “appropriation of net primary productivity” or “exponential population growth,” abstractions that require some training to understand. It may be due to historical assumptions about and habits inherited from times when human beings, as a group, had dramatically less influence on the biosphere. Now the individual deci-

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The Human Footprint and the Last of the Wild

▪ Abstract In this review, we discuss the ecological and evolutionary consequences of plant-herbivore interactions in tropical forests. We note first that herbivory rates are higher in tropical forests than in temperate ones and that, in contrast to leaves in temperate forests, most of the damage to tropical leaves occurs when they are young and expanding. Leaves in dry tropical forests also suffer higher rates of damage than in wet forests, and damage is greater in the understory than in the canopy. Insect herbivores, which typically have a narrow host range in the tropics, cause most of the damage to leaves and have selected for a wide variety of chemical, developmental, and phenological defenses in plants. Pathogens are less studied but cause considerable damage and, along with insect herbivores, may contribute to the maintenance of tree diversity. Folivorous mammals do less damage than insects or pathogens but have evolved to cope with the high levels of plant defenses. Leaves in tropical forests are ...

/pdf/herbivory-and-plant-defenses-in-tropical-forests-1h13lnojps.pdf

Herbivory and plant defenses in tropical forests

1. Hunting for the Snark, by Elizabeth L. Bennett and John G. RobinsonI: Biological Limits to Sustainability2. Carrying Capacity Limits to Sustainable Hunting in Tropical Forests, by John G. Robinson and Elizabeth L. Bennett3. Evaluating the Impact and Sustainability of Subsistence Hunting at Multiple Amazonian Forest Sites, by Carlos A. Peres4. The Sustainability of Current Hunting Practices by the Huaorani, by Patricio Mena V., Jody R. Stallings, Jhanira Regalado B. and Ruben Cueva L.5. Sustainability of Ach Hunting in the Mbaracayu Reserve, Paraguay, by Kim Hill and Jonathan Pad6. Impact of Sustainability of Indigenous Hunting in the Ituri Forest, Congo-Zaire: A Comparison of Unhunted and Hunted Duiker Populations, by John A. Har7. Threatened Mammals, Subsistence Harvesting, and High Human Population Densities: A Recipe for Disaster?, by Clare D. FitzGibbon, Hezron Mogaka, and John H. Fanshawe8. Hunted Animals in Bioko Island, West Africa: Sustainability and Future, by John E. Fa9. Differential Vulnerability of Large Birds and Mammals to Hunting in North Sulawesi, by Timothy G. O'Brien and Margaret F. Ki10. The Impact of Traditional Subsistence Hunting and Trapping on Prey Populations: Data from Wana Horticulturalists of Upland Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, by Michael AlvardII: Sociocultural Context Influencing Sustainability11. A Pound of Flesh: Social Change and Modernization as Factors in Hunting Sustainability Among Neootropical Indigenous Societie, by Allyn MacLean Stearman12. Wildlife Conservation and Game Harvest by Maya Hunters in Quintana Roo, Mexico, by Jeffrey P. Jorgenson13. The Sustainability of Subsistence Hunting by the Sirion Indians of Bolivia, by Wendy R. Townsend14. Cable Snares and Nets in the Central African Republic, by Andrew Noss15. Saving Borneo's Bacon: The Sustainability of Hunting in Sarawak and Sabah, by Elizabeth L. Bennett, Adrian J. Nyaoi, and Jephte Sompud16. Agta Hunting and Sustainability of Resource Use in Northeastern Luzon, Philippines, by P. Bion Griffin and Marcus B. GriffinIII: Institutional Capacity for Management17. Hunting for an Answer: Is Local Hunting Compatible with Large Mammal Conservation in India?, by M. D. Madhusudan and K. Ullas Karanth18. Enhancing the Sustainability of Duiker Hunting Through Community Participation and Controlled Access in the Lob k Region of Southeastern Cameroon, by Cheryl Fimbel, Bryan Curran, and Leonard Usongo19. Traditional Management of Hunting in a Xavante Community in Central Brazil: The Search for Sustainability, by Frans J. Leeuwenberg and John G. Robinson20. Community-Based Comanagement of Wildlife in the Peruvian Amazon, by Richard Bodmer and Pablo E. PuertasIV: Economic Influences on Sustainability21. Wildlife Use in Northern Congo: Hunting in a Commercial Logging Concession, by Philippe, Auzel and David S. Wilkie22. Socioeconomics and the Sustainability of Hunting in the Forests of Northern Congo (Brazzaville), by Heather E. Eves and Richard G. Ruggiero23. Impact of Subsistence Hunting in North Sulawesi Indonesia, and Conservation Options,, by Rob J. Lee24. The Trade in Wildlife in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, by Lynn Clayton and E. J. Milner-GullandV: Synthesis25. Hunting for Sustainability: The Start of a Synthesis, by Elizabeth L. Bennett and John G. Robinson

/pdf/hunting-for-sustainability-in-tropical-forests-2qvvkt8j3d.pdf

Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests

Massive overhunting of wildlife for meat across the humid tropics is now causing local extinctions of numerous species. Rural people often rely heavily on wild meat, but, in many areas, this important source of food and income is either already lost or is being rapidly depleted. The problem can only be tackled by looking at the wider economic and institutional context within which such hunting occurs, from household economics to global terms of trade. Conservation efforts must be placed within a landscape context; a mosaic of hunted and no-take areas might balance conservation with continued subsistence use. Successful conservation of hunted wildlife requires collaboration at all scales, involving local people, resource extraction companies, governments and scientists.

https://www.iccs.org.uk/wp-content/papers/Milner-Gulland2003TREE.pdf

Wild meat: the bigger picture

The global trade in wildlife provides disease transmission mechanisms that not only cause human disease outbreaks but also threaten livestock, international trade, rural livelihoods, native wildlife populations, and the health of ecosystems. Outbreaks resulting from wildlife trade have caused hundreds of billions of dollars of economic damage globally. Rather than attempting to eradicate pathogens or the wild species that may harbor them, a practical approach would include decreasing the contact rate among species, including humans, at the interface created by the wildlife trade. Since wildlife marketing functions as a system of scale-free networks with major hubs, these points provide control opportunities to maximize the effects of regulatory efforts.

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Wildlife trade and global disease emergence.

The Tiger Summit, to be hosted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Russia in November 2010—the Chinese Year of the Tiger and the International Year of Biodiversity—promises to be the most significant meeting ever held to discuss the fate of a single non-human species. The Summit will culminate efforts by the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI), launched in 2008 by Robert Zoellick, World Bank President. Leaders of 13 tiger range states, supported by international donors and conservationists attending the summit, are being asked to commit to substantive measures to prevent the unthinkable: extinction of the world's last wild tiger populations.

Wild tiger numbers are at an historic low. There is no evidence of breeding populations of tigers in Cambodia, China, Vietnam, and DPR Korea. Current approaches to tiger conservation are not slowing the decline in tiger numbers [1]–[3], which has continued unabated over the last two decades. While the scale of the challenge is enormous, we submit that the complexity of effective implementation is not: commitments should shift to focus on protecting tigers at spatially well-defined priority sites, supported by proven best practices of law enforcement, wildlife management, and scientific monitoring. Conflict with local people needs to be mitigated. We argue that such a shift in emphasis would reverse the decline of wild tigers and do so in a rapid and cost-efficient manner.

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Bringing the Tiger Back from the Brink—The Six Percent Solution

/pdf/conservation-and-use-of-wildlife-based-resources-the-57n6mfkxeq.pdf

Elizabeth L. Bennett

Papers

Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests

Wild meat: the bigger picture

Wildlife trade and global disease emergence.

Bringing the Tiger Back from the Brink—The Six Percent Solution

Conservation and use of wildlife-based resources: the bushmeat crisis