UN Documents

The UN Habitat Agenda – (1176_6455_The_Habitat_Agenda)

http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/1176_6455_The_Habitat_Agenda.pdf

 

United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I) report with direct quotes
http://sovereignty.net/p/land/unproprts.htm

 

Habitat II – The UN Plan for Human Settlements – by Berit Kjos, June 1996 –
http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/hab2.html

 

Review of the UN’s Global Biodiversity Assessment Section 10
http://www.freedom.org/reports/gba10.htm

 

In their own words: from synopsis on UN’s Biodiversity Report:

The impact of human activities on ecosystems
http://www.dhushara.com/book/globio/ass.htm

The net effect of human activities may possibly be a greater overall diversity in the types of ecosystems and landscapes around the world, some of which are extremely important to societal well-being. Human activities are directly responsible for creating agroecosystems and cultural landscapes, for example. However, these increases in the diversity of ecological systems have come at the expense of impoverishment of a great number of natural communities, and the reduction of at least some ecosystem services. Although total area may or may not have changed for major vegetation types, the plant species composition within them has often been dramatically altered by practices such as various forms of logging, grazing, introduction of exotics and frag mentation, to the extent that many ecosystems contain only one or a few plant species, and at times no longer include any of the original species. For example, many native grasslands no longer exist as such, their species composition having been altered by the introduction of cattle and sheep. Northern temperate forests have changed dramatically in North America and Europe as a consequence of intensive logging, exploitation, and replanting, often with introduced species, over the last several hundred years. in terms of total area, forest and woodland communities have decreased globally by about 1 5% since pre-agricultural times.