International Union for the Conservation of Nature

Founded as the World Conservation Union, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) was created in 1948 as a result of an initiative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Swiss League for Nature Protection, and the French government.

Since then it has provided the umbrella for research and conservation work, uniting government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and individual experts from around the world. Today it employs approximately a thousand people, most of whom are located in its forty- two regional and country offices while a hundred work at its headquarters in Gland, Switzerland.

Awareness of humankind's proclivity to create environmental disasters had grown in the years between World War I and World War II, not least because of the dust bowl disaster on the American plains. Soil erosion was, however, only one symptom of a growing conflict between the planetary ecology and just one of the Earth's myriad species: humankind, whom some people were beginning to see not as Homo sapiens but as Homo "rapiens." These commentators had included writers such as Paul Sears and, after the war, such prescient individuals as Fairfield Osborn and William Vogt. It was their growing concern and that of others that led to the founding of the IUCN.

The IUCN's mission is to influence, encourage, and assist the conservation of the integrity and diversity of nature as well as to encourage a sustainable and equitable use of resources. The protection of forests, wetlands, and coastal areas has been a particular concern. The IUCN gives funds to individual countries to prepare and implement national conservation and biodiversity strategies. It provides guidelines for the establishment of protected areas and publicizes conservation issues.

Another major activity is the compilation and publicizing of "red lists" of endangered species. The IUCN also participates actively in the negotiation of international agreements relating to biological diversity and the conservation of resources. Finally, the IUCN is active in the field of environmental education.

In 1980, working with two other conservation bodies, the World Wildlife Fund and the United Nations Environment Programme, the IUCN published The World Conservation Strategy, a powerful statement of what needed to be done to reverse the on-going destruction of individual species and ecosystems. This was updated in the 1990s under the title Caring for the Earth. In particular, The World Conservation Strategy popularized the concept of sustainable development, later taken up by the famous Brundtland Report.

Amongst the IUCN's achievements have been several international conventions concerning the conservation of species. These include the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (1975) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES (1975).