Protecting the planet

Balancing the needs of development and conservation is difficult — but urgent.

Marine-park management comes under scrutiny as conservationists descend on Australia.

Experts share their priorities for what must be done to make protected areas more effective at conserving global biodiversity.

Economic indicators that omit the depletion and degradation of natural resources and ecosystems are misleading, warns Edward B. Barbier.

Heather Tallis, Jane Lubchenco and 238 co-signatories petition for an end to the infighting that is stalling progress in protecting the planet.

Failure to create marine reserve in Ross Sea raises questions over polar conservation.

Questions raised over protection levels for marine regions.

Strategy would focus on drivers of deforestation to reduce carbon emissions and improve human welfare.

Plans for a 300-kilometre waterway joining the Pacific and Atlantic oceans need independent environmental assessment, urge Axel Meyer and Jorge A. Huete-Pérez.

Edward B. Barbier and colleagues call for governance and funds for deep-sea reserves and the restoration of ecosystems damaged by commercial interests.

Tackling global problems requires a fresh approach, argues Georgina Mace, as the British Ecological Society celebrates its centenary.

Researchers are divided over the wisdom of using estimates of the amount of fish hauled in each year to assess the health of fisheries.

To succeed, the REDD initiative needs a dose of 'GREEN' to restore degraded forests and help boost economic development, argues Andy White.

Destructive lionfish are invading coral reefs in the Americas, but fishing competitions can help to keep the problem species in check.

Predators are supposed to exert strong control over ecosystems, but nature doesn’t always play by the rules.

Nations are racing to establish marine protected areas, but it's not clear whether many are living up to the name.

Climate change means that national parks of the future won't look like the parks of the past. So what should they look like?

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are an important and increasing component of marine conservation strategy, but their effectiveness is variable and debated; now a study has assembled data from a global sample of MPAs and demonstrates that effectiveness depends on five key properties: whether any fishing is allowed, enforcement levels, age, size and degree of isolation.

Analysis of changes in functional groups of species and potential drivers of environmental change for protected areas across the world’s major tropical regions reveals large variation between reserves that have been effective and those experiencing an erosion of biodiversity, and shows that environmental changes immediately outside reserves are nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate.

Two decades ago the first Earth Summit raised the question of how biological diversity loss alters ecosystem functioning and affects humanity; this Review looks at the progress made towards answering this question.