Ecosystem Services for 2020

Publication review

Despite it being the International Year of Biodiversity, the vast majority of nations have fallen far short of the Convention on Biological Diversity´s (CBD) 2010 target to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity.

This has prompted the CBD to look another ten years ahead and develop a new strategic plan of action which includes 20 SMART (Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, Timebound) targets for 2020.   These targets will then be negotiated at the upcoming 10th Conference of the Parties held in Nagoya, Japan.

Centre researcher Thomas Elmqvist, along with researchers from the US, Argentina, Chile, France, Germany and the UK, has evaluated the 20 targets set by CBD. The evaluation has been done through a set of colour-codes where:

  - Red targets refer to imminent threats of loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services due either to the collapse of ecosystems or populations, or to the rapid growth of pests or pathogens

- Green targets are those related to protected areas and conservation of species

- Blue targets address the longer-term scientific, socio-economic and institutional conditions required to meet and sustain the red and green targets.

Overall, Elmqvist and his colleagues found that the 2020 targets are a significant improvement over the previous 2010 single target. However, the new targets could also be strengthened in several ways:

- If there have to be 20 targets, then they should address the 20 biggest threats to critical ecosystem services, says Elmqvist.

Using the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment as a template, they found that four things were missing:

- Functional diversity: the targets are too focused on hierarchical classification rather than assessing the function the species have

- Trade-offs among targets: different services require different diversity, we cannot have it all

- Conditionality of targets: targets should be conditional since ecological functioning may change because the environmental conditions change

- Side-effects of targets: most targets ignore potential side effects of achieving the target

Information

Link to centre authors: Elmqvist, Thomas
Publication info: Perrings,C S. Naeem, F. Ahrestani, D. E. Bunker, P. Burkill, G. Canziani, T. Elmqvist, R. Ferrati, J. Fuhrman, F. Jaksic, Z. Kawabata, A. Kinzig, G. M. Mace, F. Milano, H. Mooney, A.-H. Prieur-Richard, J. Tschirhart, W. Weisser. 2010. Ecosystem Services for 2020. Science VOL 330:323-324.

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