Climate mitigation through nature-positive actions can be an effective strategy to promote biodiversity and reach carbon reduction targets. At the same time, connecting communities with nature can enhance alternative and integrated sustainable livelihoods to prevent deforestation, and foster best land-use practices.Forest and land-use actions can make a significant contribution to climate mitigation goals, as shown in the IPCC’s 2050 scenarios. This is unique in terms of its volume, since its mitigation potential is derived from both an enhancement of greenhouse gases (GHG) sequestration, as well as reduction of emissions through management of land and livestock (IPCC, 2018). This thematic brief promotes the work of UK Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions (UK PACT) sharing knowledge and best practices, with a particular focus on forests.
Tag: biodiversity
The extent and distribution of joint conservation-development funding in the tropics
Despite ongoing debates about the viability of sustaining economic growth while maintaining environmental integrity, international sustainability agendas increasingly propose reconciling socio-economic development and global environmental goals. Achieving these goals is impeded by limited funding and a lack of information on where financial flows to integrate environment and development are targeted. We analyze World Bank and Global Environment Facility data to investigate the extent and distribution of such funding across the tropics. We find a misalignment between funding flows and need with highly biodiverse, low development (HBLD) countries receiving no more funding than non-HBLD countries. Countries with low biodiversity receive more funding than highly biodiverse countries and there was no statistical association between a country’s development status and funds received. Rather than environment-development need, funding appears to be driven by governance and political-economic factors. Future research should investigate how such factors and funding flows are associated with conservation and development outcomes.
Analysis of Molecular Variance (AMOVA) with vegan and BiodiversityR, including a graphical method to identify potential migrants
Over a decade ago, while working on a manual for statistical analysis of dominant markers (this manual was partially inspired by a previous manual on the statistical analysis of biodiversity and community ecology data), I had explored the similarities between (i) Analysis of Molecular Variance (AMOVA) that was originally developed by Excoffier et al. 1992 ( See here for a recent expansion of the framework to autopolyploids ) and (ii) Ordination methods and Multivariate Analysis of Variance Using Distance Matrices in the field of community ecology (I provide references for these in subsequent sections). Whereas the manual is now more than a decade old (although many methods are still relevant; those interested could compare with this recent Review of Best Practices Population Genetic Analysis), in my opinion it remains valid to still highlight the connections between AMOVA and several methods of community ecology that are directly available via the vegan and BiodiversityR packages.
BiodiversityR: Package for Community Ecology and Suitability Analysis
Graphical User Interface (via the R-Commander) and utility functions (often based on the vegan package) for statistical analysis of biodiversity and ecological communities, including species accumulation curves, diversity indices, Renyi profiles, GLMs for analysis of species abundance and presence-absence, distance matrices, Mantel tests, and cluster, constrained and unconstrained ordination analysis. A book on biodiversity and community ecology analysis is available for free download from the website. In 2012, methods for (ensemble) suitability modelling and mapping were expanded in the package.
Calculating Distance Matrices with Weighted Combinations of Functional Traits and Taxonomic Distinctness
The FD package includes methods for calculating the weighted Gower dissimilarity index, through methods described in A distance‐based framework for measuring functional diversity from multiple traits. The vegan package includes methods for calculating taxonomic distances, through methods described in A taxonomic distinctness index and its statistical properties.
Renyi Diversity Profiles with vegan, BiodiversityR and ggplot2
The main objective of this document is to give some examples of how data on Renyi diversity profiles, obtained via vegan and BiodiversityR, can be plotted via ggplot2. I expect that researchers and students will modify the scripts given here to create their own graphs. This obviously requires some working knowledge of the ggplot2 package, for which I will not give details here on specific functions, arguments and choices that I selected (as an introduction to ggplot2, I would especially recommend a two-part online workshop given by Thomas Lin Pedersen).
Ordination graphs with vegan, BiodiversityR and ggplot2
The main objective of this document is to give some examples of how data from ordination, such non metric multidimensional scaling or redundancy analysis that were obtained via vegan and BiodiversityR, can be plotted via ggplot2. The key intermediate steps to allow plotting with ggplot2 is to get data in the ‘long’ (tidy) format that is used in ggplot2, which can be achieved with some functions in BiodiversityR that should work with most ordination results.
Species Accumulation Curves with vegan, BiodiversityR and ggplot2
The main objective of this document is to give some examples of how data on species accumulation curves, obtained via vegan and BiodiversityR, can be plotted via ggplot2. I expect that researchers and students will modify the scripts given here to create their own graphs. This obviously requires some working knowledge of the ggplot2 package, for which I will not give details here on specific functions, arguments and choices that I selected (as an introduction to ggplot2, I would especially recommend a two-part online workshop given by Thomas Lin Pedersen).
Forest-linked livelihoods in a globalized world
Forests have re-taken centre stage in global conversations about sustainability, climate and biodiversity. Here, we use a horizon scanning approach to identify five large-scale trends that are likely to have substantial medium- and long-term effects on forests and forest livelihoods: forest megadisturbances; changing rural demographics; the rise of the middle-class in low- and middle-income countries; increased availability, access and use of digital technologies; and large-scale infrastructure development. These trends represent human and environmental processes that are exceptionally large in geographical extent and magnitude, and difficult to reverse. They are creating new agricultural and urban frontiers, changing existing rural landscapes and practices, opening spaces for novel conservation priorities and facilitating an unprecedented development of monitoring and evaluation platforms that can be used by local communities, civil society organizations, governments and international donors. Understanding these larger-scale dynamics is key to support not only the critical role of forests in meeting livelihood aspirations locally, but also a range of other sustainability challenges more globally. We argue that a better understanding of these trends and the identification of levers for change requires that the research community not only continue to build on case studies that have dominated research efforts so far, but place a greater emphasis on causality and causal mechanisms, and generate a deeper understanding of how local, national and international geographical scales interact.
Food for thought: The underutilized potential of tropical tree‐sourced foods for 21st century sustainable food systems
The global food system is causing large‐scale environmental degradation and is a major contributor to climate change. Its low diversity and failure to produce enough fruits and vegetables is contributing to a global health crisis.
The extraordinary diversity of tropical tree species is increasingly recognized to be vital to planetary health and especially important for supporting climate change mitigation. However, they are poorly integrated into food systems. Tropical tree diversity offers the potential for sustainable production of many foods, providing livelihood benefits and multiple ecosystem services including improved human nutrition.
First, we present an overview of these environmental, nutritional and livelihood benefits and show that tree‐sourced foods provide important contributions to critical fruit and micronutrient (vitamin A and C) intake in rural populations based on data from sites in seven countries.
Then, we discuss several risks and limitations that must be taken into account when scaling‐up tropical tree‐based food production, including the importance of production system diversity and risks associated with supply to the global markets.
We conclude by discussing several interventions addressing technical, financial, political and consumer behaviour barriers, with potential to increase the consumption and production of tropical tree‐sourced foods, to catalyse a transition towards more sustainable global food systems.