Challenges to Implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has been a pivotal international instrument for global biodiversity conservation since 1992. The recent Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) aims to provide a pathway for the CBD for the present decade. However, the practicalities of land use and biodiversity conservation pose significant challenges. Drawing from diverse literature and reports, we identify nine implementation challenges for the GBF. These encompass harmonising conservation with sustainable development, integrating local values and indigenous knowledge, adopting a holistic landscape approach, and prioritising effective local governance.
Read more in the article by IBioS faculty member Dr. Jeffrey Sayer and colleagues.
How landscape traits affect boreal mammal responses to anthropogenic disturbance
Understanding mammalian responses to anthropogenic disturbance is challenging, as ecological processes and the patterns arising therefrom notoriously change across spatial and temporal scales, and among different landscape contexts. Responses to local scale disturbances are likely influenced by landscape context (e.g., overall landscape-level disturbance, landscape-level productivity). Hierarchical approaches considering small-scale sampling sites as nested holons within larger-scale landscapes, which constrain processes in lower-level holons, can potentially explain differences in ecological processes between multiple locations.
Read more in the article by IBioS faculty member Dr. Cole Burton and colleagues.
Towards more inclusive community landscape governance: Drivers and assessment indicators in northern Ghana
Community-based approaches to landscape governance are considered more legitimate, equitable, and inclusive ways to manage natural resources and more effective in achieving conservation and livelihood goals than centralised and top-down approaches. In Ghana, the Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission devolved decision-making authority over natural resources through the Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) governance system. While there is a growing body of literature on the CREMA governance model, few studies have examined the inclusiveness of its decision-making processes.
Read more in the article by IBioS faculty member Dr. Terry Sunderland and colleagues.
One size fits all: How the “Ethiopian Highlands” made Bale Mountains National Park inscrutable
The categories we use to make sense of a place are never neutral. Scientific classifications can maintain ignorance about some aspects of a landscape, even as they create knowledge about others. This article considers this in the context of Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains National Park, a landscape whose hydrologic and socio-cultural characteristics have been made inscrutable through the convergence of imperial legacies, processes of knowledge production, and complex biophysical
properties.
Read more in the article by IBioS faculty member Dr. Terre Satterfield and colleagues.
Biodiversity–production feedback effects lead to intensification traps in agricultural landscapes
Intensive agriculture with high reliance on pesticides and fertilizers constitutes a major strategy for ‘feeding the world’. However, such conventional intensification is linked to diminishing returns and can result in ‘intensification traps’—production declines triggered by the negative feedback of biodiversity loss at high input levels. Here we developed a novel framework that accounts for biodiversity feedback on crop yields to evaluate the risk and magnitude of intensification traps.
Read more in the article by IBioS faculty member Dr. Claire Kremen and colleagues.
Both technological innovations and cultural change are key to a sustainability transition
We are said to be living in the Anthropocene, a time when human activities are having as great an impact on the Earth system as other geological forces. According to the “Planetary Boundaries” framework, which uses the past 10,000 years (the Holocene) as a benchmark, human influence on the Earth system has greatly exceeded the “safe operating space” across multiple indicators, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and nutrient pollution. A critical message is that even if we solve the climate problem, the biodiversity and nutrient pollution challenges will remain.
Read more in the article by IBioS faculty member Dr. Navin Ramankutty.
The benefits of climate change mitigation to retaining rainbow trout habitat in British Columbia, Canada
Climate change is increasing stream temperatures and thereby changing habitat suitability for a variety of freshwater fishes. We investigate how suitable stream habitat for rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), a valuable cold-water species, may change in British Columbia, Canada, currently near the north end of their range.
Read more in article by IBioS faculty member Dr. Rashid Sumaila and colleagues.