Suchergebnisse

Aichi target 11 of the Convention of Biological Diversity promotes the expansion of the global protected area network to cover 17 percent of all terrestrial land and ­10 percent of coastal and marine areas by 2020 (www.cbd.int/sp/targets). At the recent World Parks Congress, organized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Sydney, Australia, 12 innovative approaches were promoted as part of the "Promise of Sydney" to help transform decisionmaking, policy, capacity, and financing for protected areas in the next decade (http://io.aibs.org/syd). The first of such approaches includes a list of 20 important recommendations to help reach conservation goals. Many of these ­recommendations are provided for ­single countries to take action individually. In addition, the final recommendation advocates that a more ambitious target of protection (50 percent global protection) should be promoted to more adequately conserve biodiversity. Both points are problematic: recent research shows that facilitating international collaboration among countries is crucial to identifying and implementing a well-connected system of protected areas that can better represent threatened biodiversity, and setting unrealistic and politically challenging global protection targets is unneeded. This Viewpoint presents three main themes of the recommendations that would benefit from greater emphasis and the promotion of the importance of international collaborations. ; Peer reviewed

3 pages, 1 table ; We highlight important steps that researchers should follow when using social media data, in particular when the aim of their research is to characterize illegal fishing. Specifically, we provide a checklist of mitigation strategies focusing on data privacy concerns and ethical principles associated with human-subject research. We hope our reflections will contribute to a more responsible use of social media and other digital platforms among marine conservation scientists ; We acknowledge the constructive feedback of two anonymous reviewers. VS is supported by a "Juan de la Cierva Incorporación" research fellowship (IJC2018-035389-I) granted by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. VS also acknowledge the Spanish government through the "Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence" accreditation to ICM-CSIC (#CEX2019-000928-S). RAC is supported by funds from the University of Helsinki through a personal grant to EDM. EDM thanks the European Research Council for funding under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (grant agreement #802933) ; Peer reviewed

Wildlife trade, when unsustainable, can be an important threat to biodiversity conservation. In this contribution, we explored the use of digital data to investigate the online market for songbirds in Indonesia, where keeping pet songbirds is a deeply rooted cultural practice. We examined the spatial characteristics of three dimensions of the songbird trade using data from online sources: birdwatchers' sightings as a proxy for the supply of the songbird market, small advertisements from an online marketplace platform, representing the trade itself and its transactions, and videos by pet songbird owners to represent the demand side of the songbird market. We found that, geographically, these three stages of the songbird supply chain did not overlap, which potentially hints at the roles extended transport networks and commercial captive breeding play for the songbird trade. The trade was not confined to major cities but spread out through the country, indicating both a possible democratisation of the trade (i.e. a larger group of sellers, and consumers selling to consumers) and an opportunity to observe previously covert parts of the trade. We further found that the asking prices on online marketplaces were significantly higher than the prices stated in an independently carried out consumer survey, and discuss possible reasons. Data from digital sources can give rich insights into the spatial, temporal and taxonomic structure of wildlife trade, can help understand the motivations of buyers and sellers, and can help direct wildlife trade towards a more sustainable fashion. Our methodology toolbox that allows automatic and continuous monitoring of online marketplaces and includes data preparation and cleaning, and follows the highest standards of data privacy principles, is openly available. ; Peer reviewed

Social media data are being increasingly used in conservation science to study human–nature interactions. User-generated content, such as images, video, text, and audio, and the associated metadata can be used to assess such interactions. A number of social media platforms provide free access to user-generated social media content. However, similar to any research involving people, scientific investigations based on social media data require compliance with highest standards of data privacy and data protection, even when data are publicly available. Should social media data be misused, the risks to individual users' privacy and well-being can be substantial. We investigated the legal basis for using social media data while ensuring data subjects' rights through a case study based on the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. The risks associated with using social media data in research include accidental and purposeful misidentification that has the potential to cause psychological or physical harm to an identified person. To collect, store, protect, share, and manage social media data in a way that prevents potential risks to users involved, one should minimize data, anonymize data, and follow strict data management procedure. Risk-based approaches, such as a data privacy impact assessment, can be used to identify and minimize privacy risks to social media users, to demonstrate accountability and to comply with data protection legislation. We recommend that conservation scientists carefully consider our recommendations in devising their research objectives so as to facilitate responsible use of social media data in conservation science research, for example, in conservation culturomics and investigations of illegal wildlife trade online. ; Peer reviewed

Gaps in research exist for country-wide analyses to identify areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services to help reach Aichi Target 11 in developing countries. Here we provide a spatial conservation prioritization approach that ranks landowners for maximizing the representation of biodiversity features and ecosystem services, while exploring the trade-offs with agricultural and commercial forestry production and land cost, using Uruguay as a case study. Specifically, we explored four policy scenarios, ranging from a business as usual scenario where only biodiversity and ecosystem services were included in the analysis to a potentially unsustainable scenario where expansion of alternative land uses and economic development would be given higher priority over biodiversity and ecosystem services. At the 17% land target proposed for conservation, the representation levels for biodiversity and ecosystem services were, on average, higher under the business as usual scenario. However, a small addition to the proposed target (from 17 to 20%) allowed to meet same representation levels for biodiversity and ecosystem services, while decreasing conflict with agricultural and commercial forestry production and opportunity costs to local landowners. Under the unsustainable scenario, a striking 41% addition to the conservation target (from 17 to 58%) was needed to meet same representation levels for threatened ecosystems and ecosystem services, which are crucial to sustain human well-being. Our results highlight that more realistic and potentially higher conservation targets, than politically set targets, can be achieved at the country level when sustainable development needs are also accounted for. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. ; Peer reviewed

Increased deployment of renewable energy can contribute towards mitigating climate change and improving air quality, wealth and development. However, renewable energy technologies are not free of environmental impacts; thus, it is important to identify opportunities and potential threats from the expansion of renewable energy deployment. Currently, there is no cross-national comprehensive analysis linking renewable energy potential simultaneously to socio-economic and political factors and biodiversity priority locations. Here, we quantify the relationship between the fraction of land-based renewable energy (including solar photovoltaic, wind and bioenergy) potential available outside the top biodiversity areas (i.e. outside the highest ranked 30% priority areas for biodiversity conservation) within each country, with selected socio-economic and geopolitical factors as well as biodiversity assets. We do so for two scenarios that identify priority areas for biodiversity conservation alternatively in a globally coordinated manner vs. separately for individual countries. We show that very different opportunities and challenges emerge if the priority areas for biodiversity protection are identified globally or designated nationally. In the former scenario, potential for solar, wind and bioenergy outside the top biodiversity areas is highest in developing countries, in sparsely populated countries and in countries of low biodiversity potential but with high air pollution mortality. Conversely, when priority areas for biodiversity protection are designated nationally, renewable energy potential outside the top biodiversity areas is highest in countries with good governance but also in countries with high biodiversity potential and population density. Overall, these results identify both clear opportunities but also risks that should be considered carefully when making decisions about renewable energy policies. ; Peer reviewed