The United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity and invited the world to take action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth. Thus, we provide a collection of information worth knowing about biodiversity. Other than that we introduce some SERI projects and publications which deal with biodiversity and list links related to current debates on this topic.

Human life strongly depends on biodiversity and related ecosystem functions, because ecosystems provide food, timber, fibres, because they contribute to air quality or nutrient cycling or because it is of enormous cultural value. Therefore, a rich biodiversity influences human well-being to a crucial extent. However, biodiversity is very much threatened, mainly due to human interactions with natural systems, which cause a pressure on those systems and thus on biodiversity and its ability to maintain or increase human well-being.

Biodiversity is defined as the “variability among all living organisms from all sources […]; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems” (United Nations, 1993). For various reasons, biodiversity is currently decreasing on both local and global scales. The high rate of species extinction is alarming. Current extinction rates are estimated to be about 400 times faster than the natural rates (Pimm, 2002), and the Millennium Assessment takes them to be 1000 times faster than the background rates typical in Earth’s history (MA, 2005). Nearly half (47%) of the terrestrial ecoregions are considered critical or endangered; another quarter (29%) are vulnerable; and only a quarter (24%) are relatively stable or intact (WWF, 2010).

Why should we maintain the biodiversity of our planet?

Simply said: Because human life depends on biodiversity. Biodiversity maintains ecosystems and ecosystems provide various services to maintain life on earth. Biodiversity is essential for the functioning of an ecosystem and human well-being is directly linked to ecosystem services, such as the provision of clean water, fresh air and nutrition (see below). The Millennium Assessment shows in its chapter on the conceptual framework, how biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being relate to each other (MA, 2005, p25).

Besides these utilitarian arguments (biodiversity should be maintained because people derive utility from their use, either directly or indirectly), there are also intrinsic values attributed to biodiversity: from the perspective of many ethical, religious, and cultural points of view ecosystems are of value in and for itself – irrespective of its utility for humans.

Functions of Ecosystems

Biodiversity provides functions via ecosystem services. In order to assess the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems, the concept of “ecosystem services (ESS)” has been used, for example, by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA, 2005). It is a concept that essentially examines the link between biodiversity/ecosystems and human well-being. These services include the following:

• provisioning services: products obtained from ecosystems, for example food, fresh water, fuel, genetic resources;

• regulating services: benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes, for example climate and disease regulation, water purification;

• cultural services: non-material benefits, for example spiritual and religious, aesthetic, inspirational; and

• supporting services: services necessary for the production of all of the above, for example soil formation, nutrient cycling.

These different services show how people rely on biodiversity in their daily lives, often without realizing it. Nevertheless, many services are often ignored or undervalued by politics and decision makers (MA, 2005; UNEP, 2007). Due to complex interrelationships between biodiversity and ecosystems, changes in biodiversity can influence many services of an ecosystem. If the current losses of biodiversity continue at the same or even faster rate as nowadays, future development options will become restricted for rich and poor alike. However, poor people are affected more directly.

TEEB

TEEB is the ‘Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ study (some call it the “Stern report for Biodiversity”). It is a major international initiative aiming to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity, to highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and to bring together expertise from the fields of science, economics and policy to enable practical actions moving forward. Amongst others, the study wants to integrate ecological and economic knowledge in order to structure the evaluation of ecosystem services under different scenarios. TEEB seeks to show that economics can be a powerful instrument in biodiversity policy, both by supporting decision processes and by forging discourses between science, economics and governing structures. (TEEB, 2010)

The TEEB report is on its way. Parts of it have already been published: TEEB Ecological and Economics Foundation papers and TEEB for National and International Policymakers report.

The following Parts will be published in summer and autumn 2010: TEEB for Regional and Local Administrators report and TEEB for Business report and Final TEEB synthesis report.

All papers can be downloaded from www.teebweb.org

Sources:

UNEP, 2007: Global Environmental Outlook 4 (GEO-4). Environment for development. Progress Press, Malta. http://www.unep.org/geo/geo4/media/

Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (MA): Ecosystems and Human Well- being. A framework for Assessment. Island Press, 2005.

Pimm, S.L., 2002. Hat die Vielfalt des Lebens auf der Erde eine Zukunft? Natur und Kultur 3 (2), 3–33.

TEEB, 2010: http://www.teebweb.org/Home/tabid/924/language/en-US/Default.aspx and http://www.teebweb.org/AboutTEEB/Background/AimsObjectives/tabid/1040/language/en-US/Default.aspx 04.03.2010

United Nations, 1993: United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity: http://www.cbd.int/convention/ 04.03.2010

WWF, 2010: http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/ecoregions/maps/ 04.03.2010

SERI-Projects dealing with Biodiversity

At SERI we focus our research on socio-economic aspects of sustainability, although our background is interdisciplinary. We usually work together with natural scientists in most of our projects, in particular in the field of biodiversity. This approach allows us to cover a broad range of the parameters that influence and are influenced by biodiversity changes. SERI is currently working within three projects on the issue of biodiversity. Our main aim in this respect is to improve the knowledge on the relationships between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being. In collaboration with our partners we investigate how ecosystem services are perceived by people and how they are affected by global change. Our results are communicated to a wide range of stakeholders and politicians in order to form a better basis for decision making.

EcoChange Challenges in assessing and forecasting biodiversity and ecosystem changes in Europe (2007-2011)

The aim of EcoChange is to assess and forecast changes in terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystems. Building on these results, the ability of biodiversity and ecosystems to supply services and to buffer against climate and land use change will be analysed. SERI leads the integrated sustainability assessment (ISA, siehe MATISSE) of impacts of environmental change on ecosystem services. The ISA will be developed on the scale of three regional case studies, located in Belgium, Switzerland and Romania and combine the results from the modelling and socio-economic research within EcoChange. The ISA framework is strongly connected to the ABM-modelling and builds on the DPSIR-approach. For further information please refer to www.ecochange-project.eu or seri.at/ecochange

GoverNat – Multi-level Governance of Natural Resources: Tools and Processes for Water and Biodiversity Governance in Europe

The overall objective of this Marie Curie Research Training Network is to develop new solutions for multi-level environmental governance of natural resources (biodiversity and water) and to facilitate their use by decision makers in an enlarged EU. The central research objective is to test the hypothesis that certain participatory processes and analytical decision tools are particularly useful for improving multi-level environmental governance. Specific research objectives therefore address the enhanced understanding of multi-level governance of water and biodiversity, the development of methods of public and stakeholder participation to be used in such contexts, the effective utilisation of specific analytical decision tools in multi-level governance, and the reflective evaluation of such use. SERI acts as a praxis affiliate and will host 1-2 fellows in internships, where the fellows can experience from the “insider perspective” the challenges of making decisions on environmental governance at different spatial scales. For further information please refer to www.governat.eu or seri.at/governat

ALARM – Assessing large scale environmental risks for biodiversity with tested methods (2004-2009)

Alarm Assessing large scale environmental risks for biodiversity with tested methods (2004-2009) ALARM was essentially a project to improve the instruments for assessing the threat to and the loss of biodiversity in Europe, and on this basis to derive suggestions about how to stop the negative trends. The socio-economic research team used DPSIR to show the links between the socio-economic systems and biodiversity via four different pressures (climate change, loss of pollinators, use of chemicals, invasive species), on the one hand in theoretical papers (special issue in Ecological Economics, forthcoming) and in a series of case studies. For further information refer to www.alarmproject.net

SERI-Publications dealing with Biodiversity

“Public Perceptions of Nature”: Within the scope of the EU-Excellence network ALTER-Net, people’s attitudes towards biodiversity and biodiversity conservation in eight European countries were analyzed. SERI and the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change of the University of Graz conducted the Austrian case study which took place in the Eisenwurzen region. The brand-new report is available here (in German language). The survey aimed at identifying people’s perceptions of biodiversity and of measures related to nature conservation. Thus, the study scrutinized personal attitudes of respondents related to nature and environmental protection and to biodiversity loss. Apart from that, the study examined people’s perceptions of how various actors should protect nature and biodiversity and of who is responsible for nature- and biodiversity conservation.

“Perceiving biodiversity changes in daily life – insights from an exploratory survey across Europe”: Environmental problems are often constructed globally and through sophisticated instruments and methods. However, the extent to which these globally constructed problems correspond to ordinary citizens’ perceptions of the environment is often unclear.

The report “Perceiving biodiversity changes in daily life – insights from an exploratory survey across Europe”, published in “ecomont – Journal on Protected Mountain Areas Research”, focuses on results from an exploratory survey in eight sites across Europe, targeted at ordinary citizens, to determine whether biodiversity changes are perceived in daily life, and, if so, whether the views derived from these perceptions coincide with the discourse about global loss of biodiversity.

For this report Sigrid Grünberger, SERI scientist, worked on the case study site “Eisenwurzen”, an Austrian Limestone Alps National Park. The report was created in the course of the project “ALTER-Net – A Long-Term Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Awareness Research Network”.

Find out more about ALTER-Net and biodiversity research on www.alter-net.info

“Climate change as a threat to biodiversity”: Ines Omann, Andrea Stocker and Jill Jäger published an article in the Special Section: The DPSIR framework for Biodiversity Assessment of the Ecological Economics Journal. The new publication “Climate change as a threat to biodiversity: An application of the DPSIR approach” is a result of the Alarm project (Assessing large scale environmental risks for biodiversity with tested methods).

Links

2010 International year of biodiversity: www.cbd.int/2010/welcome

Convention on Biological Diversity: www.cbd.int

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB): www.teebweb.org

Millenium Ecosystem Assessment: www.millenniumassessment.org

European Environmental Agency on DPSIR: www.eea.europa.eu/documents/brochure/brochure_reason.html

International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources: www.iucn.org

Millennium Development Goals: www.un.org/millenniumgoals

Summer School 2010 on “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” (ALTER-Net): The ALTER-Net Summer School will be held from 5 – 14 September 2010, in Peyresq, Alpes de Haute-Provence, France and is now open for applications (deadline 15 April)!
The Summer School shall contribute to durable integration and the spread of excellence within and beyond the network, with a view to promoting interdisciplinary approaches.
The 2010 Summer School will focus on:

• Biodiversity and ecosystems in Europe;

• Ecosystem processes, function, services and benefits;

• Resilience of social and natural systems;

• Valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services;

• Linking biodiversity research with policy and the public.

Approximately 20 experts will give lectures on the themes mentioned above. Guided by tutors in the afternoon, working groups will discuss implications of findings for an actual European ecosystems and its services and compile these results. A field trip will illustrate land-use change in the Provence.

ALTER-Net Summer School Flyer

ALTER-Net Summer School Poster