11 research outputs found
Assessing the Cost of Global Biodiversity and Conservation Knowledge
<div><p>Knowledge products comprise assessments of authoritative information supported by standards, governance, quality control, data, tools, and capacity building mechanisms. Considerable resources are dedicated to developing and maintaining knowledge products for biodiversity conservation, and they are widely used to inform policy and advise decision makers and practitioners. However, the financial cost of delivering this information is largely undocumented. We evaluated the costs and funding sources for developing and maintaining four global biodiversity and conservation knowledge products: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Protected Planet, and the World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas. These are secondary data sets, built on primary data collected by extensive networks of expert contributors worldwide. We estimate that US116–204 million), plus 293 person-years of volunteer time (range: 278–308 person-years) valued at US12–16 million), were invested in these four knowledge products between 1979 and 2013. More than half of this financing was provided through philanthropy, and nearly three-quarters was spent on personnel costs. The estimated annual cost of maintaining data and platforms for three of these knowledge products (excluding the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems for which annual costs were not possible to estimate for 2013) is US6.2–6.7 million). We estimated that an additional US12 million. These costs are much lower than those to maintain many other, similarly important, global knowledge products. Ensuring that biodiversity and conservation knowledge products are sufficiently up to date, comprehensive and accurate is fundamental to inform decision-making for biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Thus, the development and implementation of plans for sustainable long-term financing for them is critical.</p></div
Distribution of PAs, IBAs, and AZEs showing (for the latter two) protected (green), partially protected (amber), and unprotected (red) sites, plus those of unknown protection status (grey), with trends in extent of PAs, and mean % area protected and % sites completely protected for IBAs and AZEs.
<p>Shading shows 95% confidence intervals based on uncertainty around date of protection (and, for a small subset of IBAs, proportion protected). For PAs, the lines represent minimum and maximum estimates with 95% confidence intervals, derived from PAs with delimited boundaries and PAs with and without delimited boundaries, respectively.</p
The proportion of total PA extent covering important sites, 1950–2006.
<p>Lines represent minimum and maximum estimates based on uncertainty in the extent of PAs.</p
Annual percentage decline in Red List Index for sets of bird species (during 1988–2008) with ≤50% or >50% of IBAs completely protected, and for bird (1988–2008), mammal (1996–2008) and amphibian species (1980–2004) restricted to single sites (AZEs) that are partially/unprotected versus completely protected (averaged across taxa, weighting species equally).
<p>Numbers within each bar refer to the number of species. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals based on uncertainty around the estimated value that is introduced by Data Deficient species.</p
Summary of data collection for all four knowledge products.
<p>The table summarises which costs were collected for each of the four knowledge products and how much of the total number of assesments, available in December 2013, these represent. In cases where 100% of the costs were not collected, the total sum for each knowledge product was increased propotionally to reach 100%.</p
Development status of the four knowledge products included in this study.
<p>A brief description of each knowledge product is available in [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0160640#pone.0160640.ref007" target="_blank">7</a>].</p
Sources of funding (midpoints of estimates) until 2013 for all knowledge products.
<p>Others include multilateral donors and financial institutions.</p
Categories, subcategories and funding sources classification used to categorise costs.
<p>Categories, subcategories and funding sources classification used to categorise costs.</p
Estimated costs to reach pre-defined baselines by 2020 for each knowledge product.
<p>Estimated costs to reach pre-defined baselines by 2020 for each knowledge product.</p
Sources of funding (midpoints of estimates) invested until 2013 for each knowledge product.
<p>Sources of funding (midpoints of estimates) invested until 2013 for each knowledge product.</p