During the next decade, what are the minimum changes to global policy needed to ensure that negative impacts of anthropogenic environmental change on the majority of biodiversity, ecosystem function and services are still reversible?

Biodiversity supports ecosystem function and ultimately the delivery of ecosystem services to society. Human driven environmental changes are negatively impacting biodiversity, but in many systems it is still possible to reverse these impacts given sufficient political and socio-economic will. The challenge is therefore to understand what is the minimum we need to do in the short-term (10 years) to ensure sustainable ecosystem services in the longer terms (>50 years). The obstacles to achieving this are numerous and include: lack of understanding of the links between biodiversity, ecosystem function and ecosystem services and how these are impacted by multiple pressures; inappropriate national and global governance systems to react rapidly and effectively to negative impacts of biodiversity loss to ensure long-term benefits; lack of societal and political understanding of the consequences of biodiversity and ecosystem service loss; uncertainty of the expected impacts on society under various future scenarios.

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