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With the rapid population growth especially in Uganda and Africa following the pandemic. there is need for support structures to youth led initiative driving positive change in the communities through hands on advocacy and awareness innovations producing clean energy and creating green jobs while building good ecosystem mindset more especially among farmers in the grass root levels.

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We seek to promote the value of forests and other biological resources related to biodiversity, watershed protection, carbon fixation, use of genetic material, maintenance of scenic beauty, production of water and energy.

www.huaravitonaturereserve.ga

#IUCNGlobalYouthSummit
#YouthSpeak #ForNature
#DecadeOnRestoration #EcosystemRestoration #GenerationRestoration #Tourism4SDGs #TravelEnjoyRespect #act4SDGs #DecadeOfAction #SDGs

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A healthy and sustainable environment is the foundation of an equitable, functioning society and the basis for prosperity, well-being, security, and stability of human and animal life. We must implement global, national and subnational policies on the conservation, restoration, and sustainable management of ecosystems, landscapes, and seascapes, including building cities with nature, through locally adapted, resource-efficient, and just systemic interventions. These must be based on the precautionary principle and follow a global mitigation hierarchy for nature conservation.

In this context we are urging governments to fully utilise the opportunity presented by the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of our ecosystems and the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework in order to build a clear pathway to achieve a world in harmony with nature.

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Our Future With Nature | GYBN - Our Future With Nature | GYBN

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A healthy and sustainable environment is the foundation of an equitable, functioning society and the basis for prosperity, well-being, security, and stability of human and animal life. We must implement global, national and subnational policies on the conservation, restoration, and sustainable management of ecosystems, landscapes, and seascapes, including building cities with nature, through locally adapted, resource-efficient, and just systemic interventions.

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share your thoughts on this list of demands for international action!

Develop effective governance structures, community management systems, and natural resource schemes that center the voices, needs, and key roles of Indigenous Peoples, womxn, youth, local communities, and ecosystems. Engage rights-holders in the design, implementation, and monitoring of environmental policies at the local, regional, and global levels.

Implement place-based conservation practices, including both terrestrial and marine protected area designations, that are managed through community-led decision-making processes.

Redesign education and capacity-building systems in order to transform our societies for a more fair and sustainable future. Include biodiversity issues in formal education curricula while supporting informal education initiatives that share these concepts with children and youth, especially through experiential learning.

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What Guam can teach us about rescuing a destabilized ecosystem

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What Guam can teach us about rescuing a destabilized ecosystem

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An article that does a great simple overview of the challenges islands such as Guam face with invasive species and biodiversity management. A CTA for laws that take ecological functions of endangered endemic species into account.

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Walking through the forest in Guam is unsettling. Unlike tropical forests pretty much anywhere else in the world, it's almost dead silent.

It's quiet because there are virtually no birds. Brown tree snakes, an invasive species that was thought to have come to the island in the 1950s as a stowaway on a ship, feasted on the eggs of the island's birds. Within just a few decades, nearly all of the 12 native species were pushed to the brink of extinction.

The birds played a critical role in the small island's ecosystem. In their absence, Guam's ecology has transformed in ways both dramatic and subtle. When integral species disappear, ecosystems become more unstable. That's bad news for Guam, but it could also be a cautionary tale for animals (and the people that rely on them) elsewhere in the world. Huge populations of animals are already around the planet, and just how that loss plays out, or what kinds of interventions should be taken to counteract that die-off, will depend on how well scientists understand its effects.

"Islands in general are good foretelling the future of mainlands because things that take a really long time on the mainland happen really fast here," says Haldre Rogers, an ecology professor at Iowa State University who studies the Marianas.

Ecologists long ago coined the term "keystone species" to describe the species without which an ecosystem could cease to function. Rogers, who let me stay in her field house on a recent visit to Guam, calls the island's birds a "keystone functional group." They, along with the threatened Mariana fruit bat, are essential because they move seeds around.

Birds and bats eat the fruit from trees, but don't fully digest the seeds. Instead, the seeds pass through their digestive systems, which removes seeds' tough outer coats and . Then, the seeds are dropped, in a nutrient-rich pile of excrement, wherever the animals happen to be at the time. That means the seeds are more likely to germinate than if they'd just fallen off a tree. In addition, being farther away from their parents gives the seedlings a better chance of success (PDF) because they're not competing with their tall, mature parents for resources like space, light, and water. Much of that wouldn't have been possible without the flying animals' help. Without any birds and very few bats, you get a forest full of gaps-fewer seeds are there to replace trees that fall.

"[Seed dispersal] is the engine that keeps the forest going," Rogers says. "Without that process happening, without seeds being moved around, you get the slow degradation of the forest."

The forest has changed in other ways since the birds started dying out. Fewer plant species now grow in Guam's forest (this is also in part because invasive pig and deer eat some native species). And a person walking through the forest would find themselves constantly swatting spider webs from their face, because the (unsettlingly large) creators of those webs aren't getting eaten by their natural predators: birds.

A spider in its web in a forest in Guam.

A less robust forest in Guam is at risk for profound disruption. Trees are more likely to fall during typhoons, which hit the island every few years. Since birds aren't dispersing the trees' seeds as efficiently, there are fewer trees left of reproductive age, so the forest will take much longer to recover from a damaging event like a typhoon. In short, the absence of keystone species leaves the forest more vulnerable to irrevocable damage, changing in ways that kill off or force out other animals that still live there. And because Guam is so small and isolated, animals that lose their habitat really have nowhere else to go.

These disastrous scenarios aren't guaranteed to happen. In fact, Rogers has been impressed with how resilient ecosystems can be-even on Guam, which she says is an "extreme" example of how profoundly ecosystems can be disrupted and still more or less function. Even when a particular species or type of organism disappears, the ecosystem often can often carry on. Forests may continue to provide a habitat for the organisms that are left-even if it's a much less ideal habitat than existed before.

Sometimes, in ecosystems that lose ecologically important species, other species-new ones, or ones already present- fill the gaps. But in Guam's forest, no other species has stepped in to take the birds' place.

We've known for a while that top predators like and are disappearing from landscapes; only more recently have researchers realized that animals that had once been abundant, such as , , and (all of which can be keystone species), are disappearing, too. Species don't have to go extinct for them to no longer be able to fill their ecological niche, Rogers points out. Losing a big enough proportion of the individuals in the population might be enough to reduce its ability to fulfill its ecological role.

Laws intended to protect plants and animals, like the US Endangered Species Act, aren't designed to take their ecological functions into account. As more of the world's ecosystems start to look more like Guam's forests, scientists may push to change that.

There are ways to make a difference without waiting for legal restructuring. On Guam, to get rid of the brown tree snake, researchers and government employees are experimenting with baited traps and have launched rapid response teams when locals spot them (they're encouraged to call 1-671-777-HISS). Scientists are working with the US military to section off an area of forest on the Air Force base and ensure that it becomes and stays completely devoid of the invasive snakes. There's talk of bringing the birds back to Guam; Rogers is optimistic. If it's possible to resuscitate Guam's forests, maybe we could do the same for other disrupted ecosystems elsewhere in the world.

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What Guam can teach us about rescuing a destabilized ecosystem

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Walking through the forest in Guam is unsettling. Unlike tropical forests pretty much anywhere else in the world, it's almost dead silent. It's quiet because there are virtually no birds. Brown tree snakes , an invasive species that was thought to have come to the island in the 1950s as a stowaway on a ship, feasted on the eggs of the island's birds.

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5 Little Changes for Biodiversity Protection

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5 Little Changes for Biodiversity Protection

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The Global Landscapes Forum's tiny video on little actions individuals and governments can take that make big differences in the long run

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5 things you can do to protect biodiversity

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Happy 15 Years to the Protected Areas Network of Palau!

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Happy 15 Years to the Protected Areas Network of Palau!

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A short video on the history and hope behind the Protected Areas Network of Palau. The founders and advocates of this network of conservation areas bought together to express their thoughts on how it was conceived and what it has become.

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Richard Brooks- Lightning Strike Productions

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The History of Conservation in Palau. The Protected Areas Network.

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IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature

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Uniendo las Voces de las Juventudes por la Biodiversidad

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Uniendo las Voces de las Juventudes por la Biodiversidad

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GYBN's Survey on Youth Priorities for the
Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

la encuesta de GYBN sobre Las Prioridades de la Juventud para el Marco Mundial de la Biodiversidad Posterior a 2020

l'enquête GYBN
sur les priorités des jeunes pour le
Cadre Mondial de la Biodiversité Post-2020

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Turn data collection into an experience with Typeform. Create beautiful online forms, surveys, quizzes, and so much more. Try it for FREE.

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learn about the Convention on Biological Diversity from GYBN, the Global Youth Biodiversity Network

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Integrate communities FULLY and HOLISTICALLY- employ a bottom-up approach that empowers local communities and puts their knowledge and experience in the forefront