Four steps for the Earth: mainstreaming the post-2020 global biodiversity framework

The upcoming Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting, and adoption of the new Global Biodiversity Framework, represent an opportunity to transform humanity's relationship with nature. Restoring nature while meeting human needs requires a bold vision, including mainstreaming biodiversity conservation in society. We present a framework that could support this: the Mitigation and Conservation Hierarchy. This places the Mitigation Hierarchy for mitigating and compensating the biodiversity impacts of developments (1, avoid; 2, minimize; 3, restore; and 4, offset, toward a target such as "no net loss" of biodiversity) within a broader framing encompassing all conservation actions. We illustrate its application by national governments, sub-national levels (specifically the city of London, a fishery, and Indigenous groups), companies, and individuals. The Mitigation and Conservation Hierarchy supports the choice of actions to conserve and restore nature, and evaluation of the effectiveness of those actions, across sectors and scales. It can guide actions toward a sustainable future for people and nature, supporting the CBD's vision

Getting Road Expansion on the Right Track: A Framework for Smart Infrastructure Planning in the Mekong.

The current unprecedented expansion of infrastructure promises to enhance human wellbeing but risks causing substantial harm to natural ecosystems and the benefits they provide for people. A framework for systematically and proactively identifying the likely benefits and costs of such developments is badly needed. Here, we develop and test at the subregional scale a recently proposed global scheme for comparing the potential gains from new roads for food production with their likely impact on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Working in the Greater Mekong-an exceptionally biodiverse subregion undergoing rapid development-we combined maps of isolation from urban centres, yield gaps, and the current area under 17 crops to estimate where and how far road development could in principle help to increase food production without the need for cropland expansion. We overlaid this information with maps summarising the importance of remaining habitats to terrestrial vertebrates and (as examples of major ecosystem services) to global and local climate regulation. This intersection revealed several largely converted yet relatively low-yielding areas (such as central, eastern, and northeastern Thailand and the Ayeyarwady Delta), where narrowing yield gaps by improving transport links has the potential to substantially increase food production at relatively limited environmental cost. Concentrating new roads and road improvements here while taking strong measures to prevent their spread into areas which are still extensively forested (such as northern Laos, western Yunnan, and southwestern Cambodia) could thus enhance rural livelihoods and regional food production while helping safeguard vital ecosystem services and globally significant biological diversity

Sensitivity tests.

<p>Results of three tests of the sensitivity of our aggregate benefit and cost surfaces to the data and rules used to assemble them: the difference in benefit scores if food production benefit was estimated using different data on yield gaps ([<a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000266#pbio.2000266.ref040" target="_blank">40</a>] cf. [<a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000266#pbio.2000266.ref028" target="_blank">28</a>]) (A), the difference in cost scores if they were based on the maximum of the three component values in any cell rather than their mean (B); and the difference in benefit scores if they were based on the product of human population density and isolation rather than potential food production benefit (C). In each case, the difference is expressed as the new minus the original aggregate score. Red colours thus correspond to lower benefit or cost scores (and blue to higher scores) than those mapped in <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000266#pbio.2000266.g002" target="_blank">Fig 2</a>. Underlying data can be found in <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000266#pbio.2000266.s011" target="_blank">S1 Data</a>.</p

Benefits and costs compared.

<p>Intersection of surfaces describing the potential food production benefit and environmental cost of road development, derived by overlaying aggregate surfaces mapped in <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000266#pbio.2000266.g001" target="_blank">Fig 1</a>. Proposals for specific roads are superimposed in black (see <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000266#pbio.2000266.s010" target="_blank">S2 Table</a>). The white area in central Cambodia is Lake Tonlé Sap. Underlying data can be found in <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000266#pbio.2000266.s011" target="_blank">S1 Data</a>.</p

Potential benefits and costs of new roads.

<p>Aggregate surfaces of potential food production benefit (A) and potential environmental cost (B) from road development, plotted in ten equal-area intervals. Potential benefit was calculated by multiplying the additional food energy that could be produced by closing yield gaps by a measure of isolation for each grid cell. Potential cost was calculated as the mean of each cell’s importance for terrestrial vertebrates, for carbon storage, and for climate regulation. In (B), protected areas are outlined in black. Underlying data can be found in <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000266#pbio.2000266.s011" target="_blank">S1 Data</a>.</p