Global Biodiversity Targets Require Both Sufficiency and Efficiency

Marco, Moreno Di; Watson, James; Venter, Oscar; Possingham, Hugh P.

doi:10.1111/conl.12299

Cited by 36 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…In response to accelerating rates of global biodiversity loss, nations have committed to ambitious conservation targets (Butchart et al, 2010;Di Marco, Watson, Venter, & Possingham, 2016;Tittensor et al, 2014), both through dedicated agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 2010) and as part of a broader commitment to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015). Halting global biodiversity decline requires conservation interventions to focus on those areas (and those taxa) that are threatened from human impact; hence, anticipating where future impacts may occur is essential for preventing future declines (Brooks et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting impacts of global climate and land‐use scenarios on plant biodiversity using compositional‐turnover modelling

Marco

Harwood

Hoskins

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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Nations have committed to ambitious conservation targets in response to accelerating rates of global biodiversity loss. Anticipating future impacts is essential to inform policy decisions for achieving these targets, but predictions need to be of sufficiently high spatial resolution to forecast the local effects of global change. As part of the intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models of the Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, we present a fine‐resolution assessment of trends in the persistence of global plant biodiversity. We coupled generalized dissimilarity models, fitted to >52 million records of >254 thousand plant species, with the species–area relationship, to estimate the effect of land‐use and climate change on global biodiversity persistence. We estimated that the number of plant species committed to extinction over the long term has increased by 60% globally between 1900 and 2015 (from ~10,000 to ~16,000). This number is projected to decrease slightly by 2050 under the most optimistic scenario of land‐use change and to substantially increase (to ~18,000) under the most pessimistic scenario. This means that, in the absence of climate change, scenarios of sustainable socio‐economic development can potentially bring extinction risk back to pre‐2000 levels. Alarmingly, under all scenarios, the additional impact from climate change might largely surpass that of land‐use change. In this case, the estimated number of species committed to extinction increases by 3.7–4.5 times compared to land‐use‐only projections. African regions (especially central and southern) are expected to suffer some of the highest impacts into the future, while biodiversity decline in Southeast Asia (which has previously been among the highest globally) is projected to slow down. Our results suggest that environmentally sustainable land‐use planning alone might not be sufficient to prevent potentially dramatic biodiversity loss, unless a stabilization of climate to pre‐industrial times is observed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting impacts of global climate and land‐use scenarios on plant biodiversity using compositional‐turnover modelling

Marco

Harwood

Hoskins

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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“…Along with a lack of data around the efficiency of MPA expansion, measures of progress towards global conservation targets have focused on simplistic areal assessments, such as "country X has conserved Y% of its Exclusive Economic Zone," despite requirements for ecological representation (CBD, 2010;Tittensor et al, 2014;Watson et al, 2016). Addressing the representation elements of Aichi target 11 has been a problem due to a lack of adequate indicators (Boonzaier & Pauly, 2015;Di Marco, Watson, Venter, & Possingham, 2016;Watson et al, 2016). However, newly developed representation metrics such as "protection equality (PE)" (Barr et al, 2011;Chauvenet, Kuempel, McGowan, Beger, & Possingham, 2017) and "mean percentage gap" (Sutcliffe, Klein, Pitcher, & Possingham, 2015) provide a timely opportunity to address this challenge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Poor ecological representation by an expensive reserve system: Evaluating 35 years of marine protected area expansion

Jantke

Jones

Allan

et al. 2018

CONSERVATION LETTERS

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Global areal protection targets have driven a dramatic expansion of the marine protected area (MPA) estate. We analyzed how cost-effective global MPA expansion has been since the inception of the first global target (set in 1982) in achieving ecoregional representation. By comparing spatial patterns of MPA expansion against optimal MPA estates using the same expansion rates, we show the current MPA estate is both expensive and ineffective. Although the number of ecoregions represented tripled and 12.7% of national waters was protected, 61% of ecoregions and 81% of countries are not 10% protected. Only 10.3% of the national waters of the world would be sufficient to protect 10% of each ecoregion if MPA growth since 1982 strategically targeted underrepresented ecoregions. Unfortunately 16.3% of national waters are required for the same representative target if systematic protection started in 2016 (an extra 3.6% on top of 12.7%). To avoid the high costs of adjusting increasingly biased MPA systems, future efforts should embrace target-driven systematic conservation planning. K E Y W O R D S

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“…Targets should also reflect levels of conservation actions that are sufficient to deliver the protection and restoration of biodiversity, based on the best available scientific evidence (Di Marco et al. ). For example, to aim sufficiently high to halt the loss of biodiversity, there have been calls to increase the values of some quantitative elements, such as those of Target 11 (Locke ; O'Leary et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nonetheless, Di Marco et al. () called for scientists to be more engaged during target setting, specifically by providing policy makers with “direct evidence of how alternative formulations of targets […] can lead to improved biodiversity outcomes.” As negotiations around the post‐2020 global biodiversity framework proceed, we hope our analysis encourages decision makers to adhere to a SMART‐based framework as closely as possible to provide a strong basis for targets that are consistently interpreted, effectively applied, and adequate for the conservation, restoration, and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relating characteristics of global biodiversity targets to reported progress

Green

Buchanan

Butchart

et al. 2019

Conservation Biology

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To inform governmental discussions on the nature of a revised Strategic Plan for Biodiversity of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), we reviewed the relevant literature and assessed the framing of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets in the current strategic plan. We asked international experts from nongovernmental organizations, academia, government agencies, international organizations, research institutes, and the CBD to score the Aichi Targets and their constituent elements against a set of specific, measurable, ambitious, realistic, unambiguous, scalable, and comprehensive criteria (SMART based, excluding time bound because all targets are bound to 2015 or 2020). We then investigated the relationship between these expert scores and reported progress toward the target elements by using the findings from 2 global progress assessments (Global Biodiversity Outlook and the Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). We analyzed the data with ordinal logistic regressions. We found significant positive relationships (p < 0.05) between progress and the extent to which the target elements were perceived to be measurable, realistic, unambiguous, and scalable. There was some evidence of a relationship between progress and specificity of the target elements, but no relationship between progress and ambition. We are the first to show associations between progress and the extent to which the Aichi Targets meet certain SMART criteria. As negotiations around the post‐2020 biodiversity framework proceed, decision makers should strive to ensure that new or revised targets are effectively structured and clearly worded to allow the translation of targets into actionable policies that can be successfully implemented nationally, regionally, and globally.

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Global Biodiversity Targets Require Both Sufficiency and Efficiency

Cited by 36 publications

References 13 publications

Projecting impacts of global climate and land‐use scenarios on plant biodiversity using compositional‐turnover modelling

Projecting impacts of global climate and land‐use scenarios on plant biodiversity using compositional‐turnover modelling

Poor ecological representation by an expensive reserve system: Evaluating 35 years of marine protected area expansion

Relating characteristics of global biodiversity targets to reported progress

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