Designing Climate‐Smart Conservation: Guidance and Case Studies

Abstract

To be successful, conservation practitioners and resource managers must fully integrate the effects of climate change into all planning projects. Some conservation practitioners are beginning to develop, test, and implement new approaches that are designed to deal with climate change. We devised four basic tenets that are essential in climate-change adaptation for conservation: protect adequate and appropriate space, reduce nonclimate stresses, use adaptive management to implement and test climate-change adaptation strategies, and work to reduce the rate and extent of climate change to reduce overall risk. To illustrate how this approach applies in the real world, we explored case studies of coral reefs in the Florida Keys; mangrove forests in Fiji, Tanzania, and Cameroon; sea-level rise and sea turtles in the Caribbean; tigers in the Sundarbans of India; and national planning in Madagascar. Through implementation of these tenets conservation efforts in each of these regions can be made more robust in the face of climate change. Although these approaches require reconsidering some traditional approaches to conservation, this new paradigm is technologically, economically, and intellectually feasible.

Lattice-work corridors for climate change: a conceptual framework for biodiversity conservation and social-ecological resilience in a tropical elevational gradient

“…We concur with Hansen et al (2010) that we may need to "build the bicycle while riding it," that is, devise and implement novel reforestation and land-use management practices as we learn from successes and failures in the field. However, this should not deter efforts.…”

Optimisation of the conservation of rare and vulnerable plant species in the perspective of climate change in Lithuanian (nature) reserves

“…Mitigation of the direct effect of climate change should be applied for 14 plant species; improvement of an existing level of rareness -even for 42; respecting the relation to physical and biological environment -for 12, consideration of spread and geographical limits -for 7 plant species. Other studies show that additional unnatural stress, usually caused by human activity (degradation of habitats and their destruction, overusing of resources, pollution and invasive species) reduces the ability of ecosystems and populations to survive and adapt to the effects of climate change (Hansen et al 2009). Conservation plans with one of the aim being to manage the effect of climate change has certain tasks such as: saving climatic refugia (refuge place where climate has changed least); to create corridors and nets in which species would migrate due to changing conditions; to save population consolidation zones ensuring gene transfer; revive communities, such as forests which mitigate the effect of climate change; to save more residential populations; to conserve heterogeneity of habitats (Millar et al 2007).…”

“…To mitigate other stresses (Hansen et al 2009); recover extinct habitats (Lawler 2009); to controll grazing and to change fi eld labour schedules (Chambers et al 2005); to improve the protection of swamps (Hartig et al 1997); to identify adaptive genes (Rice and Emery 2003); to predict effects on ecosystems (Bellard et al 2012); to protect all parts of biodiversity (Pyke and Fischer 2005); to extend the surface and amount of protected territories ; to create buffer zones, to preserve heterogenity of the environment; to control the spread of the forest (Millar et al 2007). …”

“…In 2009 Hansen et al presented "Climate-smart conservation strategy". They claim that during the climate change four main concepts should be recognized, i.e., to conserve adequate and appropriate space, reduce non--climatic stress, use adaptive management and test strategies adapted to climate change beforehand, and therefore reduce the speed of climate change and amount reducing overall risk (Hansen et al 2009). Local climate change management: Since protected areas are of different format and habitats, there are different communities and species conserved, the effect of climate change might occur inequitably.…”

“…To widen genetic diversity of species restoring territories and planting forests (Lovejoy and Hannah 2005); to mitigate other stresses (Hansen et al 2009); to protect metropopulations (Opdam et. al.…”