How does mankind, responsible for climatic and other anthropogenic changes including geo-political and cultural processes, interact with biodiversity, ecosystems and the services they provide?

The widespread recognition of the considerable value of biodiversity and ecosystems for man kind has led to an increasing need to understand and assess the role of biodiversity and ecosystem services and to assess the changing state of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and public attitudes towards them. Understanding the changing state there is a need to analyse the impact of the most significant drivers, including human behaviour, and their interactions on biodiversity. Analysing options for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and evaluating the effectiveness of policy and communication instruments should help with what to do about the changing state of biodiversity and ecosystem services (quoted from the Common Research Strategy of ALTER-Net, a long-term biodiversity, ecosystem and awareness research network.

What are the global impacts (socio, economic, others) of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation?

The reason why the “Vision” must address this question is that biodiversity loss impacts local communities, environmentally, culturally, socially, and economically. However, unless we have a global perspective of the level of the threat (ex. IPCC and climate change), we will be hard pushed to reach the tipping point of public concern to come up with the level of response required.

How can we satisfy the (increasingly conflicting) needs to maintain global human well-being and to maintain global biodiversity (including its “option values” for the future)?

Earth system research focuses on “observing, understanding, reconstructing and predicting global environmental changes involving interactions between land, atmosphere, water, ice, biosphere, societies, technologies and economies”. The question I pose is perhaps the most fundamental of the “interactions” questions relating to global environmental change. It matches well the Vision’s goals to identify “research questions that… would provide answers that are relevant to the needs of decision-makers concerned with global environmental change and human well-being”. This question might have been listed only under “biodiversity” – but I list it as “Interdisciplinary” because it is an multidisciplinary challenge, and perhaps calls for new institutions and programs over the next decade. At same time, it makes sense that “biodiversity” is highlighted because biodiversity underpins present and future benefits and services.

This question is important in next decade because there is a narrow window of opportunity to find effective solutions. Answers to the question would serve the needs of decision-makers in addressing the increasing “tensions” between local versus global values; current versus future benefits; known elements of diversity versus unknown elements, etc. There are good opportunities to make a difference in the next decade. For example, emerging new technologies for rapid biodiversity discovery and assessment, if well-coordinated regionally and globally, might help us to integrate biodiversity values into interdisciplinary conservation planning, and into policy frameworks such as “beyond-2010”.

What are the regional vulnerabilities in the availability of fresh water to support human needs and sustain freshwater biodiversity, and how can these vulnerabilities be mitigated?

Fresh water is multi-user resource subject to multiple threats including over-exploitation and contamination such that both quantity and quality of water is absolutely limiting for humans in many parts of the globe. Freshwater ecosystems support around 10% of global biodiversity (in less than 1% of the Earth’s surface area), and provide valuable ecosystem services upon which humans depend. Growing human water demands are placing increasing pressure on the ability of freshwater ecosystems to meet human needs, and degrading the capacity of fresh waters to sustain biodiversity. There is evidence that freshwater biodiversity is already undergoing pandemic decline, but responses to these declines at regional or larger scales are lacking. Global climate change and burgeoning populations will exacerbate present conflicts between humans and nature as demands for fresh water increase, but the vulnerability of fresh water biodiversity to impacts arising from this conflict will vary regionally. It is imperative that we identify which regions are now – and which will be – most vulnerable with respect to human needs for water and potential biodiversity loss. These data will provide an essential first step to devising adaptation and mitigation measures intended to ensure that human water requirements can be met without loss of biodiversity or irreparable degradation of freshwater ecosystem function.

How long can the Earth System sustain the present rate of human-induced global-environmental change?

Humans are modifying the planet at an alarming rate. Cropland and pasture now cover almost 50% of the entire land surface. This has led to massive habitat destruction, fragmentation and pollution and, together with overhunting, is causing a critical loss in biodiversity. Agricultural pollution is also having a devastating impact on aquatic and marine ecosystems which, together with industrial fishing, is causing collapse of key species populations within these ecosystems. Industrial pollution and burning hydrocarbons is causing polar warming which threatens to destabilize the remaining ice-sheets and reservoirs of methane stored in the polar oceans and permafrost. With populations in the US, China and India still rising, these clearly unsustainable practices are set to continue. The critical question is how long can planetary environmental processes continue to function before these human-induced changes trigger negative feedbacks that result in a switch to an alternate and less supportive Earth System state?

How can we boost agricultural output and improve rural livelihoods in the developing world (especially sub-Saharan Africa) without attendant land/forest degradation and resultant biodiversity loss?

Sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest region of the world and experiencing high rates of land degradation, desertification, forest degradation and loss. The ecology-welfare link in this part of the world is very strong and most people live outside formal institutions and markets. Declining crop yields have meant agricultural expansion and in places like the Eastern Afromontane Hotspot this means large potential for the loss of endemic species. Livelihoods here are also closely tied to annual rainfall patterns and any near term changes in these as a result of climate change may also rationalize further agricultural expansion (e.g. to areas with more stable rainfall, or as an insurance mechanism to ensure a certain level of output). Here we have a nexus of severe poverty, high biodiversity, poor agricultural productivity, climate vulnerability and potential loss of carbon stored in woodland and forest ecosystems.

What are the feed back mechanisms between biodiversity and climate, how will they change over the next decades and what are the consequences?

Climate change and biodiversity change are interacting in feed-back loops that are poorly understood and unquantified and modelled. This applies to changing land (agriculture, desertification, cities, etc), and oceans (colour and physical stability of the ocean surface, acidification and calcifying organisms etc.) alike. The changing physico-chemical environment will exert important selective pressures on biological species and communities. Extinction of vulnerable species and explosions of adapted species are to be expected. They will change surface characteristics such as temperature, colour and albedo, gas exchange and atmospheric composition (CO2, NOx, methane). To predict the consequences a good understanding of these feed-back mechanisms is required, both on land and in the oceans.ue

How can biodiversity serve a role in agricultural resilience to climate change, both in supporting ecosystem services, and for adaptability of livelihoods?

Biodiversity has formed the basis for human food production systems and human livelihoods for millennia. Due to agricultural intensification, land use change, and global warming, agricultural biodiversity is at high risk. The in situ genetic resources of crops and livestock are threatened, and also, many stress-adapted landraces are being replaced by modern high-input varieties. These losses create important problems for generating the genetics and breeding programs to adapt to climate change. Resilience can also be potentially accomplished with greater reliance on complex multispecies systems, including microbes, soil fauna, and beneficial insects. To increase adaptive capacity, appropriate social, cultural and economic contexts are needed for research programs that involve the participation of those who are intended to benefit from research. This will require adaptive management and long-term alliances between diverse stakeholders that increase the coping ability during unpredictable periods of resource limitation, e.g., drought. In a wider context, at the landscape scale, biodiversity serves important functions that enhance the environmental resource base upon which agriculture depends, e.g., water purification in nearby wildland waterways, and regional effects on microclimate and water availability due to forest cover. There is still much to be learned about how decision-makers at various scales can work together to support research and coping strategies to manage the mosaic of ecosystems in a landscape in ways that support sustainability and high productivity as the climate changes, and to enhance diversification that will permit adaptive responses in response to extreme events.

What are the components and dimensions of biodiversity that are necessary for particular ecosytem processes, functions and services, now and in the future?

Biodiversity has many dimensions (composition, variation, richness, phylogenetic, interactions and networks). We understand that diversity and variability provide insurance against future changes (~resilience). But which measures of biodiversity will best predict the quality and quantity of ecosystem processes, functions and services that biodiversity supports and on which we depend? When, where and how is biodiversity most significant? Answering this question, even in very general terms, is a necessary pre-requisite to an effective biodiversity monitoring system, to predicting damaging impacts of biodiversity loss, and will contribute to fully integrated earth system models.

What are the critical biodiversity levels below which ecosystems collapse, due to human interventions?

Mankind will exploit ecosystems more and more to fulfill its needs. Once the use will destroy its capability to restore and will lead to an irreversible loss of both biodiversity and its production capability. The knowledge of these critical levels are a matter of life and death.