This manual was assembled under the VALEURS Project for the purpose of providing government administrators, educators, researchers and representatives of the NGO community with an overview of the concept of sustainable use. As such, it is designed to introduce the reader to the basic principles of sustainable use.

We have relied heavily on a previous publication entitled Sustainable Use, A Guide for Decision Makers, which was prepared by Mr. Robert (Hank) G. W. Jenkins in collaboration with the senior author of this manual. We have organized the manual along the lines of the four "domains" of factors that the Technical Advisory Group of the IUCN/SSC SUSG recognized in an Analytic Framework for Assessing Sustainability. To Hank, Maria Elena Zaccagnini, Chair of the SUSG Technical Advisory Committee, and her colleagues on the Committee, we express our sincerest gratitude for their contributions. There is no doubt that this manual would be far less effective if they had not prepared these pioneering syntheses of sustainable use.

This manual is designed to serve as a guide to assist government officials to develop and adopt policies that will be supportive of the broad principles of sustainable use. It should also be of value to prospective resource managers, including individual entrepreneurs and rural communities to develop (or redesign) resource management systems that will respond to those factors necessary to promote sustainability.

The manual was released as a "work in progress". It was first used in a pilot training course offered to government officials and other specialists at the invitation of the VALEURS Project Manager, IUCN Senegal.

Finally, we sincerely hope that this manual will assist nations to adopt the legislation necessary to promote sustainability in all forms of uses of biological diversity. Only through the maintenance of nation's biological diversity will the rural people of those countries have the resources to contribute to their economic development.

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