Global biodiversity targets have not been met due to weak implementation at the national level. National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) are central for mainstreaming biodiversity by translating global ambition into national policies. This study analyzes the practical role of global and national biodiversity agendas. Interviews from France, Germany, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Rwanda, and South Africa show that global targets and NBSAPs have raised awareness, mobilized initiatives, mobilized support for implementation, and fostered accountability. Nevertheless, conflicting interests, weak financial support, and poorly integrated institutional and regulatory structures remain challenges to implementation. Levers for harnessing the role of future NBSAPs to achieve the goals and targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework are: improving communication; defining concrete measures and clear responsibilities; fostering cross-sectoral commitment; enshrining targets into national laws; ensuring adequate public funding; reforming harmful subsidies; ensuring coordination among sectors and levels of governance; and strengthening accountability frameworks.
Tag: biodiversity
Evenness mediates the global relationship between forest productivity and richness
Biodiversity is an important component of natural ecosystems, with higher species richness often correlating with an increase in ecosystem productivity. Yet, this relationship varies substantially across environments, typically becoming less pronounced at high levels of species richness. However, species richness alone cannot reflect all important properties of a community, including community evenness, which may mediate the relationship between biodiversity and productivity. If the evenness of a community correlates negatively with richness across forests globally, then a greater number of species may not always increase overall diversity and productivity of the system. Theoretical work and local empirical studies have shown that the effect of evenness on ecosystem functioning may be especially strong at high richness levels, yet the consistency of this remains untested at a global scale. Here, we used a dataset of forests from across the globe, which includes composition, biomass accumulation and net primary productivity, to explore whether productivity correlates with community evenness and richness in a way that evenness appears to buffer the effect of richness. Specifically, we evaluated whether low levels of evenness in speciose communities correlate with the attenuation of the richness–productivity relationship. We found that tree species richness and evenness are negatively correlated across forests globally, with highly speciose forests typically comprising a few dominant and many rare species. Furthermore, we found that the correlation between diversity and productivity changes with evenness: at low richness, uneven communities are more productive, while at high richness, even communities are more productive. Synthesis. Collectively, these results demonstrate that evenness is an integral component of the relationship between biodiversity and productivity, and that the attenuating effect of richness on forest productivity might be partly explained by low evenness in speciose communities. Productivity generally increases with species richness, until reduced evenness limits the overall increases in community diversity. Our research suggests that evenness is a fundamental component of biodiversity–ecosystem function relationships, and is of critical importance for guiding conservation and sustainable ecosystem management decisions.
Drones, communities and nature: pitfalls and possibilities for conservation and territorial rights
Since the early 2010s, small drones have become key tools for environmental research around the globe. While critical voices have highlighted the threat of ‘green securitisation’ and surveillance in contexts where drones are deployed for nature conservation, Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) worldwide have also begun using drones – most often in alliance with non-governmental organisations or researchers – exploring this technology’s potential to advance their own territorial, political and socio-ecological goals. Against this backdrop, this paper examines six different experiences in five countries where communities are using small drones in areas of high ecological and cultural diversity with international significance for nature conservation. We highlight the ways that communities deploy drones – both in terms of their motivations and actual use strategies. We also reflect upon the opportunities and barriers that IPLCs and their collaborators encounter in designing and implementing meaningful drone strategies, explicitly considering social, economic and political challenges. Finally, we consider the socio-ecological outcomes that community drone use enables across these sites along with the ways that drones engender more biocultural and territorial approaches to conservation through IPLC-led monitoring and mapping efforts. In conclusion, we suggest that effective, meaningful and appropriate deployment of drones, especially with IPLCs as protagonists in their use, can support nature conservation together with the recognition and protection of biocultural and territorial rights. Given the mounting demands for conservation to counter intertwined global socio-environmental crises, community drones may play a role in amplifying the voices and territorial visions of IPLCs.
Status of terrestrial mammals in the Yangambi Landscape, Democratic Republic of the Congo
In this study we provide the first comprehensive camera-trap assessment of terrestrial mammals in the Yangambi landscape, comprising the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve and a logging concession in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The terrestrial mammal community in this area exhibits lower occupancy and species richness compared to other conservation areas in the Congo Basin. The community is dominated by four species: Emin’s pouched rat Cricetomys emini (1.3 kg), African brush-tailed porcupine Atherurus africanus (2.8 kg), blue duiker Philantomba monticola (5 kg) and bay duiker Cephalophus dorsalis (12 kg), which are known to be highly resilient. Large ungulates and medium-sized carnivores have particularly low abundances. Our study also confirmed the presence of four species categorized as threatened on the IUCN Red List: the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes, giant ground pangolin Smutsia gigantea, black-bellied pangolin Phataginus tetradactyla and white-bellied pangolin Phataginus tricuspis. Our findings highlight the need to consider wildlife conservation at the landscape level, including the logging concession, where species showed higher occupancy levels compared to the Biosphere Reserve, and highlighting the need for planning infrastructure construction and developing mitigation schemes, reducing forest degradation from logging and developing permanent cash crop agriculture. Landscape-level conservation will only be possible if a collaborative management model steered by local communities is developed with the participation of all constituencies.
Community forests as beacons of conservation: Enabling local populations monitor their biodiversity
Habitat fragmentation is one of the main threats to biodiversity in Africa. In this article, we highlight the importance of conserving the Guinean forests of West Africa, which are rich in biodiversity and endemism but threatened by habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation. The size of forest patches is critical, with larger fragments containing more species than smaller ones. The protection of intact, dense forest patches is vital for any conservation strategy in West Africa, but improving the management of forests that are already used for logging and hunting is also essential. Community forests (CFs) can play a crucial role in conservation, especially if there is a substantial network that can promote ecological connectivity. However, biomonitoring in CFs remains a challenge due to inadequate resources. By developing standardised, easy-to-apply and inexpensive methods for biomonitoring, communities can be involved in biomonitoring instead of relying solely on scientists and expensive equipment. We present a monitoring framework here where we suggest local communities should become the main agents for biomonitoring in their own forests; we highlight a five-step scheme. The importance of the various CFs in terms of conservation should be made through a combination of accurate, standardised face-to-face interviews with selected persons in the target communities and biomonitoring be based on the RAPELD scheme. The latter will be implemented after specifically training local ‘wise’ persons. We are proposing a kind of ‘citizen science’ scheme, applied to enhance the ability of local communities to monitor their own biodiversity.
Worrying decline of fish in the Congo River: Evidence from a site in Tshopo Province
Key messages
- Evidence shows severe decline in many fish species in site along the Congo River in Tshopo Province
- Fish are essential sources of nutrients in local diets and important for livelihoods
- Urgent need for better management of fisheries before problem becomes even worse
- Any management solution will depend on active participation of the fishers themselves
Occurrence dynamics of mammals in protected tropical forests respond to human presence and activities
Protected areas (PAs) play a vital role in wildlife conservation. Nonetheless there is concern and uncertainty regarding how and at what spatial scales anthropogenic stressors influence the occurrence dynamics of wildlife populations inside PAs. Here we assessed how anthropogenic stressors influence occurrence dynamics of 159 mammal species in 16 tropical PAs from three biogeographic regions. We quantified these relationships for species groups (habitat specialists and generalists) and individual species. We used long-term camera-trap data (1,002 sites) and fitted Bayesian dynamic multispecies occupancy models to estimate local colonization (the probability that a previously empty site is colonized) and local survival (the probability that an occupied site remains occupied). Multiple covariates at both the local scale and landscape scale influenced mammal occurrence dynamics, although responses differed among species groups. Colonization by specialists increased with local-scale forest cover when landscape-scale fragmentation was low. Survival probability of generalists was higher near the edge than in the core of the PA when landscape-scale human population density was low but the opposite occurred when population density was high. We conclude that mammal occurrence dynamics are impacted by anthropogenic stressors acting at multiple scales including outside the PA itself.
GlobalUsefulNativeTrees, a database documenting 14,014 tree species, supports synergies between biodiversity recovery and local livelihoods in landscape restoration
Tree planting has the potential to improve the livelihoods of millions of people as well as to support environmental services such as biodiversity conservation. Planting however needs to be executed wisely if benefits are to be achieved. We have developed the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees (GlobUNT) database to directly support the principles advocated by the ‘golden rules for reforestation’, including planting tree mixtures that maximize the benefits to local livelihoods and the diversity of native trees. Developed primarily by combining data from GlobalTreeSearch with the World Checklist of Useful Plant Species (WCUPS), GlobUNT includes 14,014 tree species that can be filtered for ten major use categories, across 242 countries and territories. The 14,014 species represent roughly a quarter of the tree species from GlobalTreeSearch and a third of the plant species from WCUPS. GlobUNT includes over 8000 species used as materials (9261 species; 68.4% of the total in WCUPS for that use category) or medicines (8283; 31.1%), over 2000 species with environmental uses (3317; 36.9%), used as human food (3310; 47.0%) or fuel (2162; 85.5%), over 1000 species used as gene sources (1552; 29.8%), animal food (1494; 33.7%), social uses (1396; 53.8%) or poisons (1109; 36.8%), and 712 species (68.4%) as insect food.
Learning pathway: Course flows & blueprint
This course is a pivotal contribution to FAO’s vision of fostering a Better Environment, particularly focusing on Biodiversity for food and agriculture. Aligned with FAO’s strategic initiatives, the course is fortified by the approval of the FAO Strategy on Mainstreaming Biodiversity Across Agricultural Sectors and the 2021-23 Action Plan, emphasizing the importance of targeted policies and practices for sustainable use, conservation, and restoration of ecosystems.
TreeGOER: A database with globally observed environmental ranges for 48,129 tree species
The TreeGOER (Tree Globally Observed Environmental Ranges) database provides information for most known tree species of their environmental ranges for 38 bioclimatic, eight soil and three topographic variables. It is based on species distribution modelling analyses of more than 44 million occurrences. The database can be accessed from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7922927. Statistics that include 5% and 95% quantiles were estimated for a cleaned and taxonomically standardized occurrence data set with different methods of outlier detection, with estimates for roughly 45% of species being based on 20 or more observation records. Where sufficient representative observations are available, the ranges provide useful preliminary estimates of suitable conditions particularly for lesser-known species under climate change. Inferred core bioclimatic ranges of species along global temperature and moisture index gradients and across continents follow the known global distribution of tree diversity such as its highest levels in moist tropical forests and the ‘odd man out’ pattern of lower levels in Africa. To demonstrate how global analyses for large numbers of tree species can easily be done in R with TreeGOER, here I present two case studies. The first case study investigated latitudinal trends of tree vulnerability and compared these with previous results obtained for urban trees. The second case study focused on tropical areas, compared trends in different longitudinal zones and investigated patterns for the moisture index. TreeGOER is expected to benefit researchers conducting biogeographical and climate change research for a wide range of tree species at a variety of spatial and temporal scales.