The IUCN red list of ecosystems: motivations, challenges, and applications
Keith, David A., Rodríguez, Jon Paul, Brooks, Thomas M., Burgman, Mark A., Barrow, Edmund G., Bland, Lucie, Comer, Patrick J., Franklin, Janet, Link, Jason, McCarthy, Michael A., Miller, Rebecca M., Murray, Nicholas J., Nel, Jeanne, Nicholson, Emily, Oliveira-Miranda, Maria A., Regan, Tracey J., Rodríguez-Clark, Kathryn M., Rouget, Mathieu and Spalding, Mark D. 2015, The IUCN red list of ecosystems: motivations, challenges, and applications, Conservation letters, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 214-226, doi: 10.1111/conl.12167.
In response to growing demand for ecosystem-level risk assessment in biodiversity conservation, and rapid proliferation of locally tailored protocols, the IUCN recently endorsed new Red List criteria as a global standard for ecosystem risk assessment. Four qualities were sought in the design of the IUCN criteria: generality; precision; realism; and simplicity. Drawing from extensive global consultation, we explore trade-offs among these qualities when dealing with key challenges, including ecosystem classification, measuring ecosystem dynamics, degradation and collapse, and setting decision thresholds to delimit ordinal categories of threat. Experience from countries with national lists of threatened ecosystems demonstrates well-balanced trade-offs in current and potential applications of Red Lists of Ecosystems in legislation, policy, environmental management and education. The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems should be judged by whether it achieves conservation ends and improves natural resource management, whether its limitations are outweighed by its benefits, and whether it performs better than alternative methods. Future development of the Red List of Ecosystems will benefit from the history of the Red List of Threatened Species which was trialed and adjusted iteratively over 50 years from rudimentary beginnings. We anticipate the Red List of Ecosystems will promote policy focus on conservation outcomes in situ across whole landscapes and seascapes.
Unless expressly stated otherwise, the copyright for items in DRO is owned by the author, with all rights reserved.
Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that permission has been obtained for items included in DRO.
If you believe that your rights have been infringed by this repository, please contact drosupport@deakin.edu.au.
Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that permission has been obtained for items included in DRO. If you believe that your rights have been infringed by this repository, please contact drosupport@deakin.edu.au.