The European Forest and Agriculture Optimisation Model -- EUFASOM

Land use is a key factor to social wellbeing and has become a major component in political negotiations. This paper describes the mathematical structure of the European Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization Model. The model represents simultaneously observed resource and technological heterogeneity, global commodity markets, and multiple environmental qualities. Land scarcity and land competition between traditional agriculture, forests, nature reserves, pastures, and bioenergy plantations is explicitly captured. Environmental change, technological progress, and policies can be investigated in parallel. The model is well-suited to estimate competitive economic potentials of land based mitigation, leakage, and synergies and trade-offs between multiple environmental objectives.Land Use Change Optimization, Resource Scarcity, Market Competition, Welfare Maximization, Bottom-up Partial Equilibrium Analysis, Agricultural Externality Mitigation, Forest Dynamics, Global Change Adaptation, Environmental Policy Simulation, Integrated Assessment, Mathematical Programming, GAMS

Tapping into non-English-language science for the conservation of global biodiversity.

The widely held assumption that any important scientific information would be available in English underlies the underuse of non-English-language science across disciplines. However, non-English-language science is expected to bring unique and valuable scientific information, especially in disciplines where the evidence is patchy, and for emergent issues where synthesising available evidence is an urgent challenge. Yet such contribution of non-English-language science to scientific communities and the application of science is rarely quantified. Here, we show that non-English-language studies provide crucial evidence for informing global biodiversity conservation. By screening 419,679 peer-reviewed papers in 16 languages, we identified 1,234 non-English-language studies providing evidence on the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation interventions, compared to 4,412 English-language studies identified with the same criteria. Relevant non-English-language studies are being published at an increasing rate in 6 out of the 12 languages where there were a sufficient number of relevant studies. Incorporating non-English-language studies can expand the geographical coverage (i.e., the number of 2° × 2° grid cells with relevant studies) of English-language evidence by 12% to 25%, especially in biodiverse regions, and taxonomic coverage (i.e., the number of species covered by the relevant studies) by 5% to 32%, although they do tend to be based on less robust study designs. Our results show that synthesising non-English-language studies is key to overcoming the widespread lack of local, context-dependent evidence and facilitating evidence-based conservation globally. We urge wider disciplines to rigorously reassess the untapped potential of non-English-language science in informing decisions to address other global challenges. Please see the Supporting information files for Alternative Language Abstracts

A global assessment of actors and their roles in climate change adaptation

An assessment of the global progress in climate change adaptation is urgently needed. Despite a rising awareness that adaptation should involve diverse societal actors and a shared sense of responsibility, little is known about the types of actors, such as state and non-state, and their roles in different types of adaptation responses as well as in different regions. Based on a large n-structured analysis of case studies, we show that, although individuals or households are the most prominent actors implementing adaptation, they are the least involved in institutional responses, particularly in the global south. Governments are most often involved in planning and civil society in coordinating responses. Adaptation of individuals or households is documented especially in rural areas, and governments in urban areas. Overall, understanding of institutional, multi-actor and transformational adaptation is still limited. These findings contribute to debates around ‘social contracts’ for adaptation, that is, an agreement on the distribution of roles and responsibilities, and inform future adaptation governance

Little progress in ecoregion representation in the last decade of terrestrial and marine protected area expansion leaves substantial tasks ahead

Adequate representation of biodiversity in protected area networks is a prerequisite for successful conservation. Aichi Target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity called for 17 % of land area and 10 % of marine area to be conserved in ecologically representative protected areas by 2020.We assess progress in protecting terrestrial and marine ecoregions for the decade 2011–2020, when the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 was in effect. Using spatial analyses and the mean target achievement metric, which indicates the degree to which a given representation target has been achieved, we analyze protected area coverage in nine countries from all continents, with a total of 173 terrestrial and 64 marine ecoregions.Results show that there is little evidence that the countries studied have strategically protected underrepresented ecoregions in the 2011–2020 decade. Although 170.000 km² of terrestrial and 3 million km² of marine reserves have been designated during this period in the nine countries investigated, about half of their terrestrial and marine ecoregions remain poorly protected in 2020.Our findings reinforce that targeted action is needed to adequately protect ecoregions in order for the new Kunming-Montreal target 3 to be more successful than Aichi target 11. The methodology presented allows for ongoing evaluation, identification of gaps, and monitoring of countries’ progress towards global and national targets for ecological representation and is applicable to any biodiversity surrogate beyond ecoregions and any country or region of interest

Evaluating and improving representation of ecoregions and habitat types in the Natura 2000 network of protected areas

In order to stop biodiversity loss, the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted in 1992. The current Strategic Plan for Biodiversity contains 20 so-called Aichi targets that each signatory nation is expected to reach until 2020. Despite these efforts, global biodiversity loss will likely continue beyond 2020 [1]. Aichi target 11 explicitly refers to protected areas (PA) as a means to conserve biodiversity and calls for at least 17 per cent of terrestrial areas to be conserved through PA. In the European Union (EU), the adaptions of the Birds and the Habitats directives led to the EU-wide PA network Natura 2000 which currently covers 18 per cent of the terrestrial territory. With this, the EU formally reached the areal component of Aichi target 11, but biodiversity is still declining. To promote the successful implementation of international conservation targets, interdisciplinary research on ecological and socio-economic key factors for the establishment and evaluation of PA systems is needed. PA network performance has seldom been assessed across the whole of Europe, yet there have been assessments for certain taxonomic groups and specific regions. According to Aichi target 11, PA networks need to be ecologically representative in order to protect biodiversity effectively. Our study therefore aims at evaluating representation of European biodiversity within the whole Natura 2000 network extent. As distribution data for many European species is not available or incomplete, we evaluate network performance on the ecosystem-level, at two different levels of detail, namely ecoregions and habitat types. First, we conducted a gap analysis, evaluating if the Natura 2000 network is representing ecoregions and habitat types adequately. While Aichi target 11 calls for 10 per cent of each ecoregion to be preserved, no targets exist on the habitat type level. We therefore assigned a target to each habitat type based on its threat status as evaluated by the European Red List of habitat types. We discovered that six ecoregions and 101 habitat types do not meet their representation target. To address these shortfalls, we simulated cost-efficient expansion of the network that strategically targets underrepresented ecoregions and habitat types. By signing the Convention on Biological Diversity, nations pledged 25 years ago to stop biodiversity loss, but this goal is not reached yet and will likely not be reached until 2020. Evaluating and improving existing protected area networks based on systematic conservation planning principles [2] should be one vital component in future conservation planning efforts, ensuring that protected area networks are continuously improved to conserve biodiversity more effectively. 1. Tittensor, D.P., et al., A mid-term analysis of progress toward international biodiversity targets. Science, 2014. 346(6206): p. 241-244. 2. Margules, C.R. & Pressey, R.L., Systematic conservation planning. Nature, 2000. 405(6783): p. 243-253peerReviewe

Metrics and tools for evaluating conservation target achievement in protected area networks

The Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Target 11 calls for 17% of terrestrial and 10% of marine areas to be in “effective and equitably managed, ecologically representative and well connected” protected areas by 2020. This is one of many global and national conservation policies that require progress reporting towards achieving conservation targets. Transparent and repeatable metrics that can be applied broadly are an important step towards meeting these commitments. Currently the most widely used approach for evaluating progress towards these goals is reporting total protected area coverage due to its relatively unambiguous and easily quantifiable nature. However, this alone is not a sufficient indicator for conservation achievement because it ignores the other key components of conservation target, such as how well a network represents important biodiversity features (e.g. ecological regions or species). While reporting the number or percentage of ecoregions that meet a protected area coverage target has been a first attempt towards this end, such measures ignore biodiversity features that do not reach a target but still provide some degree of protection. Building on the work by Sutcliffe et al. [1], we present two complementary metrics measuring ecological representation for protected area networks. The ‘mean protection gap’ (MPG) and the ‘mean target achievement’ (MTA) determine the degree of conservation target shortfall or achievement in a single metric and thus show a more differentiated picture of the state and progress in protected area coverage beyond reporting total protection level or amount of features that reach a target alone. To facilitate use of these metrics by researchers and conservation practitioners we have developed an R package to calculate and plot both metrics. We use Australia’s proposed Commonwealth Marine Reserve network as a case study to demonstrate the application of these metrics. Our case study showcases that the network would be praised by reporting total area protected alone, as it surpasses the 10% target of Aichi 11 four-fold with 43% of the marine area protected. However, the MPG and MTA metrics highlight shortfalls in the protection of several bioregions that would remain undetected if only the overall level of protection were considered. Additionally, MPG and MTA account for considerable, yet underperforming protection levels that are missed in other standard reporting measures, but contribute to overall biodiversity goals. We recommend these metrics be used to evaluate progress towards building representative protected area networks in line with Aichi target 11’s goals. [1] Sutcliffe P.R., Klein C.J., Pitcher C.R., Possingham H.P. (2015) The effectiveness of marine reserve systems constructed using different surrogates of biodiversity. Conservation Biology 29, 657-667.peerReviewe

Von Märkten, Konsum und einer besseren Welt. Nachhaltigkeit und Fairtrade im öffentlichen Sektor

Sarter EK, Sack D. Von Märkten, Konsum und einer besseren Welt. Nachhaltigkeit und Fairtrade im öffentlichen Sektor. In: Jantke K, Lottermoser F, Reinhardt J, Rothe D, Stöver J, eds. Nachhaltiger Konsum. Institutionen, Instrumente, Initiativen. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft; 2016: 379-394

Poor ecological representation by an expensive reserve system: evaluating 35 years of marine protected area expansion

Global areal protection targets have driven a dramatic expansion of the marine protected area (MPA) estate. We analyzed how cost-effective global MPA expansion has been since the inception of the first global target (set in 1982) in achieving ecoregional representation. By comparing spatial patterns of MPA expansion against optimal MPA estates using the same expansion rates, we show the current MPA estate is both expensive and ineffective. Although the number of ecoregions represented tripled and 12.7% of national waters was protected, 61% of ecoregions and 81% of countries are not 10% protected. Only 10.3% of the national waters of the world would be sufficient to protect 10% of each ecoregion if MPA growth since 1982 strategically targeted underrepresented ecoregions. Unfortunately 16.3% of national waters are required for the same representative target if systematic protection started in 2016 (an extra 3.6% on top of 12.7%). To avoid the high costs of adjusting increasingly biased MPA systems, future efforts should embrace target-driven systematic conservation planning