Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change

Díaz, Sandra; Settele, Josef; Brondízio, Eduardo S.; Ngo, Hien T.; Agard, John; Arneth, Almut; Balvanera, Patricia; Brauman, Kate A.; Butchart, Stuart H. M.; Chan, Kai M. A.; Garibaldi, Lucas A.; Ichii, Kazuhito; Liu, Jianguo; Subramanian, Suneetha M.; Midgley, Guy F.; Miloslavich, Patricia; Molnár, Zsolt; Obura, David; Pfaff, Alexander; Polasky, Stephen; Purvis, Andy; Razzaque, Jona; Reyers, Belinda; Chowdhury, Rinku Roy; Shin, Yunne-Jaï; Visseren-Hamakers, I.J.; Willis, Katherine J.; Zayas, Cynthia Neri

doi:10.1126/science.aax3100

Cited by 1,384 publications

(1,116 citation statements)

References 120 publications

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“…This presents a potential opportunity to expand the use of recovery units to offer more robust protection. For instance, population fragmentation (Crooks et al 2017) and climate change (Thomas et al 2004;Diaz et al 2019) are two of the most often cited threats to species persistence, aside from direct habitat loss.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recovery Units under the Endangered Species Act could be used more widely

Evans¹,

Y²,

Malcom

2020

Preprint

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Recovering species is one of the main goals of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In the face of limited budgets, diverse tools are needed to find efficient solutions. Recovery units may be one such tool -designated portions of a species' range that must be recovered individually before an entire species can be considered recovered. Recovery units allow for spatial flexibility in recovery goals and may be used in regulatory decisions such as section 7 consultation. Despite their availability, there is very little information on how recovery units have been developed and used. We mined available public data to determine the number and types of species for which recovery units have been designated; evaluated species and geographic characteristics associated with recovery unit designation; and examined how recovery units have been used in the implementation of the ESA, such as during consultation. We found 49 listed species have designated recovery units through 2017, and that these species had similar characteristics. Namely, they had relatively large ranges and were well-studied. We found taxonomic biases in recovery unit designation as well, with fish species being disproportionately likely to have recovery units and plants disproportionately less. Improvements in recovery priority numbers among species with recovery units indicate that the theoretical benefits of this tool may have translated to improved status. These data indicate that recovery units could be applied to more wide-ranging species to improve recovery under the ESA.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recovery Units under the Endangered Species Act could be used more widely

Evans¹,

Y²,

Malcom

2020

Preprint

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“…The current extinction crisis threatens biodiversity worldwide, driven primarily by loss of habitat due to human land use 5,11,12 . A decade after the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) created the strategic short-term Aichi Biodiversity Targets designed to promote and protect the planet’s biodiversity, negotiations are underway for a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework that provides an improved set of biodiversity targets for the coming decade and beyond 4,6,13,14 .…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-scale planning helps resolve global conservation needs with regional priorities

Rinnan

Jetz

2020

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10Area-based conservation through reserves or other measures is vital for preserving biodiversity 11 and its functions for future generations 1-5 , but its effective implementation suffers from a lack of 12 both management-level detail 6 and transparency around national responsibilities that might 13 underpin cross-national support mechanisms 7 . Here we implement a conservation prioritization 2,8 14 framework that accounts for spatial data limitations yet offers actionable guidance at a 1km 15 resolution. Our multi-scale linear optimization approach delineates globally the areas required to 16 meet conservation targets for all ~32,000 described terrestrial vertebrate species, while offering 17 flexibility in decision management to meet different local conservation objectives. Roughly 18 48.5% of land is sufficient to meet conservation targets for all species, of which 60.2% is either 19 already protected 9 or has minimal human modification 10 . However, human-modified areas need 20 to be managed or restored in some form to ensure the long-term survival for over half of species. 21 2 This burden of area-based conservation is distributed very unevenly among countries, and, 22 without a process that explicitly addresses geopolitical inequity, requires disproportionately large 23 commitments from poorer countries. Our analyses provide baseline information for a potential 24 intergovernmental and stakeholder contribution mechanism in service of a globally shared goal 25 of sustaining biodiversity. Future updates and extensions to this global priority map have the 26 potential to guide local and national advocacy and actions with a data-driven approach to support 27 global conservation outcomes. 28 29 Main Text: 30 The current extinction crisis threatens biodiversity worldwide, driven primarily by loss of habitat 31 due to human land use 5,11,12 . A decade after the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 32 created the strategic short-term Aichi Biodiversity Targets designed to promote and protect the 33 planet's biodiversity, negotiations are underway for a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework 34 that provides an improved set of biodiversity targets for the coming decade and beyond 4,6,13,14 . 35 Key principles shaping the new framework include a grounding in scientific understanding of the 36 planet's biodiversity, a focus on meaningful and measurable biodiversity outcomes, and 37 development of mechanisms that support equitable management between parties 15 . Conservation 38 policy and advocacy frequently features areal percentage targets -such as the 17% of land in 39Biodiversity Target 11 or the more ambitious 30% or 50% under discussion 15 -that have 40 commonly been interpreted at the national or regional level, but generally fail to account for the 41 uneven distribution of global biodiversity 6 . Other current CBD goals, by contrast, emphasize 42 minimizing species extinctions and supporting global biodiversity persistence by enhancing 43 perceptions of biodiversity importance. Thus, a good startin...

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“…Considering compelling evidence of a continued deterioration of the state of nature in the face of increasing pressures (IPBES 2019, Díaz et al, 2019), investigating the impact of conservation efforts is key to evaluating whether we have the knowledge and techniques to reverse negative trends, and to galvanise further action. Previous assessments of conservation impact investigated whether trends in extinction risk as measured through the Red List Index would have changed if no species had improved in conservation status (Hoffmann et al, 2010, Szabo et al, 2012), or if no conservation actions had taken place (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How many bird and mammal extinctions has recent conservation action prevented?

Bolam

Mair

Angelico

et al. 2020

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Aichi Target 12 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) aims to ‘prevent extinctions of known threatened species’. To measure its success, we used a Delphi expert elicitation method 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 prevented 21–32 bird and 7–16 mammal extinctions since 1993, and 9–18 bird and 2–7 mammal extinctions since 2010. Many remain highly threatened, and may still become extinct in the near future. Nonetheless, given that ten 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.

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Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change

Cited by 1,384 publications

References 120 publications

Recovery Units under the Endangered Species Act could be used more widely

Recovery Units under the Endangered Species Act could be used more widely

Multi-scale planning helps resolve global conservation needs with regional priorities

How many bird and mammal extinctions has recent conservation action prevented?

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