3. Bird Conservation

Expert assessors Tatsuya Amano, University of Cambridge, UK Andy Brown, Natural England, UK Fiona Burns, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, UK Yohay Carmel, Israel Institute of Technology Mick Clout, University of Auckland, New Zealand Geoff Hilton, Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, UK Nancy Ockendon, University of Cambridge, UK James Pearce-Higgins, British Trust for Ornithology, UK Sugoto Roy, Food and Environment Research Agency, DEFRA, UK Rebecca K. Smith, University of Cambridge, UK Wil..

Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits—"win–wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use

What Works in Conservation 2018

This book provides an assessment of the effectiveness of 1277 conservation interventions based on summarized scientific evidence. The 2018 edition contains new chapters covering practical global conservation of primates, peatlands, shrublands and heathlands, management of captive animals as well as an extended chapter on control of freshwater invasive species. Other chapters cover global conservation of amphibians, bats, birds and forests, conservation of European farmland biodiversity and some aspects of enhancing natural pest control, enhancing soil fertility and control of freshwater invasive species. It contains key results from the summarized evidence for each conservation intervention and an assessment of the effectiveness of each by international expert panels. The accompanying website www.conservationevidence.com describes each of the studies individually, and provides full references

Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits—"win–wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use

Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits—"win–wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use.The European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program; the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Innovative Training Network actions under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme; the “María de Maeztu” Programme for Units of Excellence of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; the NASA Land-Cover Land-Use Change Program; the Swiss Academy of Sciences; the National Research Foundation’s Rated Researcher’s Award; the UK Natural Environment Research Council Landscape Decisions Fellowship; and the “Nature4SDGs” project funded by NERC-Formas-DBT [UK Natural Environment Research Council-Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development-Indian Department of Biotechnology (from the Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India)].https://www.pnas.orghj2022BiochemistryForestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI)GeneticsMicrobiology and Plant Patholog

Transparency, traceability and deforestation in the Ivorian cocoa supply chain

Cocoa production has been identified as a major global driver of deforestation, but its precise contribution to deforestation dynamics in West Africa remains unclear. It is also unknown to what degree companies and international markets are able to trace their cocoa imports, and satisfy their sustainable sourcing commitments. Here, we use publicly-available remote-sensing and supply chain data for Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s largest cocoa producer, to quantify cocoa-driven deforestation and trace 2019 cocoa exports and the associated deforestation from their department of origin, via trading companies, to international markets. We find 2.4 Mha of cocoa deforestation and degradation over 2000–2019, i.e. 125 000 ha y ^−1 , representing 45% of the total deforestation and forest degradation over that period. Only 43.6% (95% CI: 42.6%–44.7%) of exports can be traced back to a specific cooperative and department. The majority of cocoa (over 55%) thus remains untraced, either indirectly sourced from local intermediaries by major traders (23.9%, 95% CI: 22.9%–24.9%), or exported by untransparent traders—who disclose no information about their suppliers (32.4%). Traceability to farm lags further behind, and is insufficient to meet the EU due-diligence legislation’s proposed requirement for geolocation of product origins. We estimate that trading companies in the Cocoa and Forests Initiative have mapped 40% of the total farms supplying them, representing only 22% of all Ivorian cocoa exports in 2019. We identify 838 000 hectares of deforestation over 2000–2015 associated with 2019 EU imports, 56% of this arising through untraced sourcing. We discuss issues of company- and state-led traceability systems, often presented as solutions to deforestation, and stress the need for transparency and for the sector to work beyond individual supply chains, at landscape-level, calling for collaboration, stronger regulatory policies, and investments to preserve the remaining stretches of forests in West Africa

Predictors of the support for the relegalisation of swill, among all respondents (n = 163).

<p>The estimates plotted are from the five models with the greatest weighting (85% of model weight), where different colours are used for each model (listed in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0196288#pone.0196288.t003" target="_blank">Table 3</a>) and model weights are proportional to the size of the points. Error bars are 89% credible intervals. For clarity, the coefficients for age groups, which was included in two models, are not plotted here; these are shown in Figure J in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0196288#pone.0196288.s002" target="_blank">S2 Appendix</a>.</p

Characteristics of different sources of food losses.

<p>Characteristics of different sources of food losses.</p

Models explaining the acceptability of different feeds, listed in order of their Akaike weights.

<p>Models explaining the acceptability of different feeds, listed in order of their Akaike weights.</p