Increased efforts are required to prevent further losses to terrestrial biodiversity and the ecosystem services that it provides
. Ambitious targets have been proposed, such as reversing the ...declining trends in biodiversity
; however, just feeding the growing human population will make this a challenge
. Here we use an ensemble of land-use and biodiversity models to assess whether-and how-humanity can reverse the declines in terrestrial biodiversity caused by habitat conversion, which is a major threat to biodiversity
. We show that immediate efforts, consistent with the broader sustainability agenda but of unprecedented ambition and coordination, could enable the provision of food for the growing human population while reversing the global terrestrial biodiversity trends caused by habitat conversion. If we decide to increase the extent of land under conservation management, restore degraded land and generalize landscape-level conservation planning, biodiversity trends from habitat conversion could become positive by the mid-twenty-first century on average across models (confidence interval, 2042-2061), but this was not the case for all models. Food prices could increase and, on average across models, almost half (confidence interval, 34-50%) of the future biodiversity losses could not be avoided. However, additionally tackling the drivers of land-use change could avoid conflict with affordable food provision and reduces the environmental effects of the food-provision system. Through further sustainable intensification and trade, reduced food waste and more plant-based human diets, more than two thirds of future biodiversity losses are avoided and the biodiversity trends from habitat conversion are reversed by 2050 for almost all of the models. Although limiting further loss will remain challenging in several biodiversity-rich regions, and other threats-such as climate change-must be addressed to truly reverse the declines in biodiversity, our results show that ambitious conservation efforts and food system transformation are central to an effective post-2020 biodiversity strategy.
Set ambitious goals for biodiversity and sustainability Díaz, Sandra; Zafra-Calvo, Noelia; Purvis, Andy ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
10/2020, Volume:
370, Issue:
6515
Journal Article
In 2010, the international community, under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity, agreed on 20 biodiversity-related “Aichi Targets” to be achieved within a decade. We provide a ...comprehensive mid-term assessment of progress toward these global targets using 55 indicator data sets. We projected indicator trends to 2020 using an adaptive statistical framework that incorporated the specific properties of individual time series. On current trajectories, results suggest that despite accelerating policy and management responses to the biodiversity crisis, the impacts of these efforts are unlikely to be reflected in improved trends in the state of biodiversity by 2020. We highlight areas of societal endeavor requiring additional efforts to achieve the Aichi Targets, and provide a baseline against which to assess future progress.
Climate change vulnerability assessment of species Foden, Wendy B.; Young, Bruce E.; Akçakaya, H. Resit ...
Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Climate change,
January/February 2019, Volume:
10, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Assessing species' vulnerability to climate change is a prerequisite for developing effective strategies to conserve them. The last three decades have seen exponential growth in the number of studies ...evaluating how, how much, why, when, and where species will be impacted by climate change. We provide an overview of the rapidly developing field of climate change vulnerability assessment (CCVA) and describe key concepts, terms, steps and considerations. We stress the importance of identifying the full range of pressures, impacts and their associated mechanisms that species face and using this as a basis for selecting the appropriate assessment approaches for quantifying vulnerability. We outline four CCVA assessment approaches, namely trait‐based, correlative, mechanistic and combined approaches and discuss their use. Since any assessment can deliver unreliable or even misleading results when incorrect data and parameters are applied, we discuss finding, selecting, and applying input data and provide examples of open‐access resources. Because rare, small‐range, and declining‐range species are often of particular conservation concern while also posing significant challenges for CCVA, we describe alternative ways to assess them. We also describe how CCVAs can be used to inform IUCN Red List assessments of extinction risk. Finally, we suggest future directions in this field and propose areas where research efforts may be particularly valuable.
This article is categorized under:
Climate, Ecology, and Conservation > Extinction Risk
Assessing species' vulnerability to climate change is becoming a prerequisite for conservation planning, but choosing approaches, methods and data can be challenging. Key to informing such choices is consideration of the full range of climate change pressures and their likely mechanisms of impact on individuals, subpopulations and species. Navigate a sound path through do's and don'ts, and explore resources and future perspectives in this exciting field.
Abstract Brazil’s Atlantic Forest is a global restoration hotspot. Most of the remaining forest areas are degraded and separated by large cities, and agricultural lands essential for national food ...security. Brazil’s restoration agenda is defined by multiple national and global restoration targets and policies, including Brazil’s Native Vegetation Protection Law (No. 12,651/2012) also known as the Forest Code, which sets minimum levels of native vegetation to be maintained or restored in rural properties. In this study we simulate the impacts of alternative restoration policies addressing targets for Brazil, and explore their impacts on selected terrestrial species and agricultural development potential in the Atlantic Forest biome. Our results show several policy options could result in different restoration amounts and spatial distributions being implemented between 2020 and 2050, but trade-offs between agriculture, biodiversity and rural livelihoods differ. Compared to the baseline scenario (implementation of the Forest Code), a scenario which focuses restoration on small farms (not mandated to undergo restoration under the current legislation) could increase forest area by 6.7 Mha across the biome (139% more than with the Forest Code), while a scenario which maximizes biodiversity gains could lead to an additional 3.9 Mha by 2050 (81% more compared to the Forest Code). We find that our restoration scenarios still allow cropland expansion and an increase in cattle herd, while pasturelands decrease. There are relatively small agricultural production losses under the alternative restoration scenarios when compared to the baseline (up to 14.4%), meaning that cattle ranching intensification is critical to enable large-scale restoration to co-exist with agricultural production. Our scenarios suggest that ambitious restoration targets in the Atlantic Forest biome (up to 15.5 Mha, consistent with existing regional initiatives) could be feasible with necessary improvements in pasture yield and a focus on scaling up support and developing restoration policies for smallholder farmers.
Aichi Target 12 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) contains the aim to ‘prevent extinctions of known threatened species’. To measure the degree to which this was achieved, we used expert ...elicitation to estimate the number of bird and mammal species whose extinctions were prevented by conservation action in 1993–2020 (the lifetime of the CBD) and 2010–2020 (the timing of Aichi Target 12). We found that conservation action prevented 21–32 bird and 7–16 mammal extinctions since 1993, and 9–18 bird and two to seven mammal extinctions since 2010. Many remain highly threatened and may still become extinct. Considering that 10 bird and five mammal species did go extinct (or are strongly suspected to) since 1993, extinction rates would have been 2.9–4.2 times greater without conservation action. While policy commitments have fostered significant conservation achievements, future biodiversity action needs to be scaled up to avert additional extinctions.
We provide a global, spatially explicit characterization of 47 terrestrial habitat types, as defined in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) habitat classification scheme, which ...is widely used in ecological analyses, including for quantifying species' Area of Habitat. We produced this novel habitat map for the year 2015 by creating a global decision tree that intersects the best currently available global data on land cover, climate and land use. We independently validated the map using occurrence data for 828 species of vertebrates (35152 point plus 8181 polygonal occurrences) and 6026 sampling sites. Across datasets and mapped classes we found on average a balanced accuracy of 0.77 (Formula: see text0.14 SD) at Level 1 and 0.71 (Formula: see text0.15 SD) at Level 2, while noting potential issues of using occurrence records for validation. The maps broaden our understanding of habitats globally, assist in constructing area of habitat refinements and are relevant for broad-scale ecological studies and future IUCN Red List assessments. Periodic updates are planned as better or more recent data becomes available.
To meet the ambitious objectives of biodiversity and climate conventions, the international community requires clarity on how these objectives can be operationalized spatially and how multiple ...targets can be pursued concurrently. To support goal setting and the implementation of international strategies and action plans, spatial guidance is needed to identify which land areas have the potential to generate the greatest synergies between conserving biodiversity and nature's contributions to people. Here we present results from a joint optimization that minimizes the number of threatened species, maximizes carbon retention and water quality regulation, and ranks terrestrial conservation priorities globally. We found that selecting the top-ranked 30% and 50% of terrestrial land area would conserve respectively 60.7% and 85.3% of the estimated total carbon stock and 66% and 89.8% of all clean water, in addition to meeting conservation targets for 57.9% and 79% of all species considered. Our data and prioritization further suggest that adequately conserving all species considered (vertebrates and plants) would require giving conservation attention to ~70% of the terrestrial land surface. If priority was given to biodiversity only, managing 30% of optimally located land area for conservation may be sufficient to meet conservation targets for 81.3% of the terrestrial plant and vertebrate species considered. Our results provide a global assessment of where land could be optimally managed for conservation. We discuss how such a spatial prioritization framework can support the implementation of the biodiversity and climate conventions.
PDF
