Suchergebnisse

Taxonomy and species conservation are often assumed to be completely interdependent activities. However, a shortage of taxonomic information and skills, and confusion over where the limits to 'species' should be set, both cause problems for conservationists. There is no simple solution because species lists used for conservation planning (e.g. threatened species, species richness estimates, species covered by legislation) are often also used to determine which units should be the focus of conservation actions; this despite the fact that the two processes have such different goals and information needs. Species conservation needs two kinds of taxonomic solution: (i) a set of practical rules to standardize the species units included on lists; and (ii) an approach to the units chosen for conservation recovery planning which recognizes the dynamic nature of natural systems and the differences from the units in listing processes that result. These solutions are well within our grasp but require a new kind of collaboration among conservation biologists, taxonomists and legislators, as well as an increased resource of taxonomists with relevant and high-quality skills.

Seeing the wood for the trees : exploring the evolution of frameworks of ecosystem services for human wellbeing / Unai Pascual and Caroline Howe -- Justice and equity : emerging research and policy approaches to address ecosystem service trade-offs / Neil Dawson, Brendan Coolsaet and Adrian Martin -- Advancing perspectives and approaches for complex social-ecological systems / Belinda Reyers and Odirilwe Selomane -- Limits and thresholds : setting global, local and regional safe operating spaces / John Dearing -- Interactions of migration and population dynamics with ecosystem services / W. Neil Adger and Matt Fortnam -- Land use intensification : the promise of sustainability and the reality of trade-offs / Adrian Martin, Brendan Coolsaet, Esteve Corbera, Neil Dawson, Janet Fisher, Phil Franks, Ole Mertz, Unai Pascual, Laura Rasmussen and Casey Ryan -- Ecosystem services and poverty alleviation in urbanising contexts / Fiona Marshall, Jonathan Dolley, Ramila Bisht, Ritu Priya, Linda Waldman, Priyanie Amerasinghe and Pritpal Randhawa -- Reciprocal commitments for addressing forest-water relationships / Lana Whittaker, Eszter K. Kovacs and Bhaskar Vira -- Restoration of ecosystems and ecosystem services / Alison Cameron -- Governing for ecosystem health and human wellbeing / Fiona Nunan, Mary Menton, Constance McDermott and Kate Schreckenberg -- Co-generating knowledge on ecosystem services and the role of new technologies / Wouter Buytaert, Boris F Ochoa-Tocachi, David M Hannah, Julian Clark and Art Dewulf -- PES : Payments for ecosystem services and poverty alleviation? / Mary Menton and Aoife Bennett --S caling-up conditional transfers for environmental protection and poverty alleviation / Ina Porras and Nigel Asquith -- Social impacts of protected areas: exploring evidence of trade-offs and synergies / Emily Woodhouse, Claire Bedelian, Neil Dawson and Paul Barnes -- Multiple dimensions of wellbeing in practice / Sarah Coulthard, J. Allister McGregor and Carole S. White -- Gender and ecosystem services : a blind spot / Katrina Brown and Matt Fortnam -- Resilience and wellbeing for sustainability / Lucy Szaboova, Katrina Brown, Tomas Chaigneau, Sarah Coulthard, Tim Daw and Tom James -- Insights for sustainable small-scale fisheries / Daniela Diz and Elisa Morgera -- Ecosystem services for human wellbeing : trade-offs and governance / Georgina Mace, Kate Schreckenberg and Mahesh Poudyal

As environmental scientists working in countries whose COVID-linked deaths already exceed their military casualties from all campaigns since 1945, we believe there are significant messages from the handling of this horrific disease for efforts addressing the enormous challenges posed by the ongoing extinction and climate emergencies.

At the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, 190 countries endorsed a commitment to achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national levels. A wide range of approaches is available to the monitoring of progress towards this objective. The strengths and weaknesses of many of these approaches are considered, with special attention being given to the proposed and existing indicators described in the other papers in this issue. Recommendations are made about the development of indicators. Most existing and proposed indicators use data collected for other purposes, which may be unrepresentative. In the short term, much remains to be done in expanding the databases and improving the statistical techniques that underpin these indicators to minimize potential biases. In the longer term, indicators based on unrepresentative data should be replaced with equivalents based on carefully designed sampling programmes. Many proposed and existing indicators do not connect clearly with human welfare and they are unlikely to engage the interest of governments, businesses and the public until they do so. The extent to which the indicators already proposed by parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are sufficient is explored by reference to the advice an imaginary scientific consultant from another planet might give. This exercise reveals that the range of taxa and biomes covered by existing indicators is incomplete compared with the knowledge we need to protect our interests. More fundamentally, our understanding of the mechanisms linking together the status of biodiversity, Earth system processes, human decisions and actions, and ecosystem services impacting human welfare is still too crude to allow us to infer reliably that actions taken to conserve biodiversity and protect ecosystem services are well chosen and effectively implemented. The involvement of social and Earth system scientists, as well as biologists, in collaborative ...

Our current global food system – from food production to consumption, including manufacture, packaging, transport, retail and associated businesses – is responsible for extensive negative social and environmental impacts which threaten the long-term well-being of society. This has led to increasing calls from science–policy organizations for major reform and transformation of the global food system. However, our knowledge regarding food system transformations is fragmented and this is hindering the development of co-ordinated solutions. Here, we collate recent research across several academic disciplines and sectors in order to better understand the mechanisms that 'lock-in' food systems in unsustainable states.