Julian Caldecott

Complex Earth systems under stress from global heating can resist change for only so long before tipping into transitional chaos. Convergent trajectories of change in Arctic, Amazon and other systems suggest a biosphere tipping point (BTP) in this mid-century. The BTP must be prevented and therefore offers a hard deadline against which to plan, imp...

Surviving climate chaos needs communities and ecosystems able to cope with near-random impacts. Their strength depends upon their integrity, so preserving and restoring this is essential. Total climate breakdown might be postponed by extreme efforts to conserve carbon and recapture pollutants, but climate chaos everywhere is now inevitable. Adaptat...

Surviving climate chaos needs communities and ecosystems able to cope with near-random impacts. Their strength depends upon their integrity, so preserving and restoring this is essential. Total climate breakdown might be postponed by extreme efforts to conserve carbon and recapture pollutants, but climate chaos everywhere is now inevitable. Adaptat...

The Indonesia–Norway REDD+ Partnership - Volume 53 Issue 2 - Julian Caldecott

The richer countries spend about US $ 165 billion yearly on overseas aid, mainly to keep human development going. These efforts are undermined by climate change, water-catchment damage, biodiversity loss, and desertification, and their interactions with social systems at all scales, which few aid designs or evaluations fully address. This must chan...

In the south of the biodiversity-rich Indonesian province of Papua, a large agricultural program is planned for the districts around Merauke, with the ostensible aim of helping to meet Indonesia's food requirements. Questions arise over the scheme's compliance with national laws and sustainability policies, as well as its likely impacts on indigeno...

Translocation of wild animals often seems appealing and may be attempted for conservation, educational, commercial, scientific or compassionate reasons. Close examination of the actual and potential problems involved, however, casts doubt on the real value of translocation in many cases. Such problems may revolve around the following factors: cost,...

In our debate between two experts, Crossfire invites Julian Caldecott to debate with Ed Stentiford and Iole Issaias the following: 'Carbon mitigation funds can be used as an important vehicle to deliver the water and sanitation targets of the MDGs'.

https://archive.org/details/worldatlasofgrea05cald for full text in English https://archive.org/details/worldatlasofgrea05jcal for full text in French

What are the challenges involved in protecting biodiversity in tropical terrestrial and coastal ecosystems? What practical lessons can be learned from conservation projects? And what are the procedures and attitudes of governments, NGOs, donor agencies, development banks and consulting firms? These key questions are all answered, drawing on the aut...

The Convention on Biological Diversity aims to encourage and enable countries to conserve biological diversity, to use its components sustainably and to share benefits equitably. Species richness and endemism are two key attributes of biodiversity that reflect the complexity and uniqueness of natural ecosystems. National data on vertebrates and hig...

Malaysian forests are able to supply a number of non-wood products, including rattan, tourism revenue, wild meat and phytochemical and pharmaceutical products. These products can be incorporated within the variable management systems of 20-60 years proposed for these dipterocarp forests. This would maximise their long-term productivity with an incr...

A 29-month field study of the pig-tailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina), and a review of the literature on its genus, suggests that, in this cercopithecine group, resource distribution may influence male grouping tendency not by way of female distribution, but rather indirectly through female sexual behaviour. This variation on a usual mammalian theme...

During the 1970s many countries imposed bans or quotas on the export of their wild indigenous primates9,11. This strongly affected the primate-using industries and research laboratories of the developed world, since their most important raw material became rapidly more expensive and unreliable in supply. By the end of that decade, Cavey and Ter Haa...

Releasing animals into the wild, especially when they have become extinct there, is an appealing and dramatic conservation technique. It is, however, fraught with risks and often expensive; its success depends upon meticulous planning. The authors discuss the reasons for translocation, the many problems involved and the special cases where such an...

Sympatric gibbon species Hylobates lar and H. syndactylus were censused on a mountain in Malaya (West Malaysia). Habitat quality was assessed between 380- and 1,525-m altitudes. H. syndactylus was found to occur up to altitudes higher than does H. lar, and this is discussed with reference to the two species' divergent foraging strategies indicated...