Wet Tropics features in UNESCO speech

An address by the Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova at the Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit session on ‘International and Civil Society Perspectives’ singled out the Wet Tropics.

Ms Bokova was speaking about the UNESCO Man and Biosphere program which has 630 sites in 120 countries in its world network of biosphere reserves. To ensure the success of the program, she highlighted the need to share knowledge across all of the sites to ‘connect the dots on global trends and possible tipping points for the planet’.

In her speech, Ms Bokova highlighted the importance of a management framework that recognises the important role of Aboriginal people and local and Indigenous knowledge to advance sustainability and contribute to a better understanding of climate change.

She said the management framework has had a tremendous, positive impact on the protection of the Wet Tropics – especially compared to other tropical rainforests, facing environmental threats, the resettlement of large numbers of people, and habitat degradation for key species.

Read the full address here.

Published: 08th Dec 2014