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Poverty, business strategy and sustainable development. International development planning and poverty alleviation strategies have moved beyond centralised, top-down approaches and now emphasise decentralised, community-based approaches that incorporate actors from the community, government, non-governmental agencies and business. Collective action by Bottom of the Pyramid residents gives them greater control in self-managing environmental commons and addressing the problems of environmental degradation. Co-creation and engaging in deep dialogue with stakeholders offer significant potential for launching new businesses and generating mutual value. The case study rests on the tenets of corporate social responsibility. It serves as an example of corporate best practices towards ensuring environmental sustainability and community engagement for providing livelihood support and well-being. It illustrates the tool kit for building community-based adaptive capacities against climate change.

The field-based case study was prepared from inputs received from detailed interviews of company functionaries. Company documents were shared by the company and used with their permission. Secondary data was accessed from newspapers, journal articles available online and information from the company website.

The case study is about the coming together of several vital agencies working in forest and wildlife conservation, climate change adaptation planning for ecosystems and communities, social upliftment and corporate social responsibility in the Kanha Pench landscape of Madhya Pradesh in Central India. The case traces several challenges. First, the landscape is degrading rapidly; it requires urgent intervention to revive it. Second, the human inhabitants are strained with debilitating poverty. Third, the long-term sustainability of the species of tigers living in the protected tiger reserves of Kanha and Pench needs attention as human-animal conflicts rise.

The case would help undergraduate and postgraduate students studying sustainability and corporate social responsibility.

The purpose of the paper is to review the existing landscape of consumption and production in wildlife tourism and, more precisely, discuss how tiger tourism is packaged and produced as a product or commodity for the consumption of wildlife tourists. In doing so, the study explores the issues and challenges for responsible consumption and production (SCP) of wildlife tourism in the context of progress toward sustainable development goal (SDG12) responsible consumption and production.

The paper combines an analysis of existing literature and insights from the tiger reserve stakeholders. Qualitative analysis using semi-structured interviews and participant observation methods are used to derive insights.

This paper explores the status of SCP of wildlife tourism, particularly tiger tourism in Indian national parks. The paper then discusses the implications of SCP for various stakeholders in wildlife tourism.

This paper explores the perspective of SCP in wildlife tourism, and it provides innovative approaches that stakeholders should adopt.

Mangrove has the potential to adapt climate change threats like sea level rise, extreme high water events, and coastal erosions. The large stretched root systems of the mangrove acts as a natural barrier to catch hold of the run off soil, leading to accretion of coastal areas. Due to human and other natural activities, mangroves in different parts of the world are being degraded. Citing examples from India, this chapter provides ways of unique mangrove comanagement system with the involvement of local communities, NGOs, and local governments.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the biodiversity and threatened species reporting of the top 150 Fortune Global companies. The paper has two main objectives: to explore the extent to which the top 150 Fortune Global companies disclose information about their biodiversity and species conservation practices, and to explore the effects of biodiversity partners and industry on companies’ biodiversity and threatened species reporting.

The study’s sample is the top 150 Fortune Global companies. Each company’s fiscal year ending 2014 annual report, its 2014 sustainability report, and its company website were content analyzed for evidence of biodiversity and threatened species reporting. This content analysis is supplemented by a detailed analysis that focusses on the sample’s top five reporters, including a phone interview with a senior sustainability manager working at one of these companies. Finally, a regression analysis was conducted to examine the associations between companies’ biodiversity and threatened species reporting and the presence/absence of biodiversity partners and a company’s industry F&C Asset Management industry category.

The reporting on biodiversity and threatened species by the top 150 Fortune Global companies is quite limited. Few companies (less than 15) are providing any substantial reporting. It was further observed that even among the high scoring companies there is a lack of consistent reporting across all index items. A subsequent empirical examination of these companies’ disclosures on biodiversity and threatened species showed a statistically positive association between the amount of reporting and companies’ holding of biodiversity partnerships. It was also observed that firms categorized as red- and green-zone companies made more disclosures on biodiversity and threatened species than amber-zone companies.

This is the first study to systematically analyze corporate disclosures related to threatened species and habitats. While some prior studies have included the concept of biodiversity when analyzing organizations’ environmental disclosures, they have done so by examining it as one general category out of many further categories for investigating organizations’ environmental reporting. In the present study, the focus is on the specific contents of biodiversity disclosures. As such, this study has the twin research objectives of seeking to illuminate the current state of biodiversity and threatened species reporting by the world’s largest multinationals and provide an appreciation for how certain organizational and industry variables serve to influence these reporting practices. These multiple insights offer companies, and potentially regulators, understanding about how to include (or extend) disclosures on biodiversity loss and species under threat of extinction.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of eco‐tourism on the socio‐economic characteristics of the native inhabitants and natural resources in Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR), India. The paper estimates the recreational value and measures the willingness to pay (WTP) of the stakeholders and tourists to conserve the forest eco‐system.

The paper draws upon theories and issues of eco‐tourism to examine the economic value of forest ecosystem, including direct and indirect use values of the ecological regulatory services. The 60 sample stakeholders of the study were agricultural and forest dependents and tourist dependents in addition to 60 visitors of ATR spot.

The travel cost had a significant negative influence on frequency of visits, while education had a positive impact. The agriculture and forest dependents, tourist dependents and tourists were WTP an average amount of Rs 202 (US$4.03), Rs 449 (US$9.55) and Rs 656 (US$14.00)/annum, respectively, towards internalizing eco‐tourism‐related externalities. The option value of conserving the ATR was estimated by contingent valuation method using bidding game technique. Education and number of animal species sighted have positively related to WTP and was highly significant.

The paper addresses the attitude of people towards conservation of the forest biodiversity, as well as increasing the income of the people via eco‐tourism.

The outcome implies that eco‐tourism will reduce the dependency of forest and also create more employment and other tourism‐related income augmenting activities and thus enhancing additional income through tourism related occupations. The paper suggests the establishment of several other eco‐parks in Tamil Nadu for protecting the biodiversity as well as generating additional income and improving the livelihood security of the population.

The concepts of Tapovana are rooted in the spiritual values given by the people to their natural surroundings in appreciation of miraculous benefits in terms of ecosystem services. Some of the natural landscapes have become notable when the well-known hermits spent their spiritual life, such as in Shivapuri and Khaptad. In the present contexts, Tapovana concepts have contributed for conservation programs in the protected areas and heritage sites. In fact, such sites have also received importance because of shrines that existed there. In Nepal, protected areas and ecotourism are complementary to each other resulting in multiplier effects for win-win situation. At present, the modern form of Tapovana satisfies spiritual and physical needs of visitors. Its applications prevail in conventional education and sustainable development.

This study aims to examine the latent capability of alternative-responsible tourism and ecotourism management in sustainable tourism and rural communities' livelihoods in Musina Municipality in Limpopo Province, South Africa, and benchmark the capability with other African countries amid climate change and environmental degradation dilemmas. Hence, the aforementioned objective coordinates with various agrarian locations elsewhere abroad.

Literature reviews, document reviews, interviews, and focus group discussions were employed to gather data, which was enriched by field observation views. To this end, potential climate change-linked environmental degradation, rural tourism, agricultural, and environmental management issues came to the fore.

Environmental degradation poses a possible threat to natural resource management, as evidenced by the rural development, ecotourism and agricultural activities within the study region. Thereupon, environmental degradation supplements the probability of adverse effects from climate change and precarious incomes. According to the research, responsible tourism and ecotourism are vital to promoting sustainability in rural localities.

The plenteous biodiversity of the municipality offers a better scenario for sustainable ecotourism in tandem with agritourism efforts to address the identified ongoing and liability issues. These issues have therefore symbolized the need for an adequate and allied tourism strategy to boost the local people in Musina Municipality and, conceivably, throughout the continent.

Among biologists it is generally recognized that market activity is having a devastating effect on the biological world. The current worldwide loss of biodiversity may be of the same order of magnitude as the five mass extinctions which have decimated life on earth during the past 500 million years. One reason for the current crisis is that decisions about resource use are increasingly made from the narrow perspective of market exchange. Decisions made in this context necessarily place a lower value on preservation than those made in a broader social context. Although the phenomenon of discounting generally works against biodiversity conservation, policies may be devised to use discounting to implement land use policies which will take effect in the relatively distant future.

Although a very poor country, Nepal has established an extensive protected area system. Many visitors are attracted by some of these parks, helping to make tourism the top foreign exchange earner. Landmark events for wildlife conservation during recent Nepalese history are identified, especially the 1961‐90 rule of the monarchy and the present decentralized democratic system which succeeded it. Although many problems remain, Nepal has gone further than most countries towards reconciling: the needs and aspirations of local people with protected area management, and the economic opportunities offered by nature tourism with its ecological threats. Innovative projects have emphasized the socio‐economic aspects of conservation and legislation has recently been passed to formalize the status of park buffer zones. The future of Nepal’s protected areas may depend on how effectively these initiatives can be implemented and how effectively their lessons can be applied on a broader front.