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14 - The United Kingdom's role in international conservation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

By
N. Leader-Williams  and
A.M. Rosser
Edited by
Norman Maclean
Norman Maclean
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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Summary

Summary

Britain supports very little globally important biodiversity, but many of its wild habitats have been heavily modified by people to produce a beautiful, varied and much cherished countryside. However, Britain and Britons have exerted a probably disproportionate impact and influence, both positive and negative, on international efforts to conserve global biodiversity, which this chapter seeks to overview. We focus on the impacts and influence of the political unit of the United Kingdom to conserving global biodiversity, and avoid overlap with other chapters in this book that focus on Britain's international conservation role in the UK Overseas Territories (Chapter 13), or in Europe (Chapter 12) and its coastal waters (Chapter 34). In terms of negative impacts, Britain is estimated to go into ecological debt for some 75% of the year, no doubt contributing disproportionately to ongoing global losses of biodiversity, through threats such as habitat loss and global warming.

In terms of negative impacts, Britain has provided considerable support to international efforts to conserve biodiversity as a result of its convening power, the conservation organisations and conventions it has helped establish, the research undertaken by its learned societies and scientific institutions, the role it plays in maintaining dead and live collections, its role in promoting research to define global priorities and its role in building national capacity and in raising public awareness. […]

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Chapter
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Silent Summer
The State of Wildlife in Britain and Ireland
 , pp. 216 - 242
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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