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Buried by bad decisions
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From the text: Alas, research shows that when human beings make decisions, they tend to focus on what they are getting and forget about what we are forgoing.
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Faustian bargains? Restoration realities in the context of biodiversity offset policies
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The science and practice of ecological restoration are increasingly being called upon to compensate for the loss of biodiversity values caused by development projects. Biodiversity offsetting—compensating for losses of biodiversity at an impact site by generating ecologically equivalent gains elsewhere—therefore places substantial faith in the ability of restoration to recover lost biodiversity. Furthermore, the increase in offset-led restoration multiplies the consequences of failure to restore, since the promise of effective restoration may increase the chance that damage to biodiversity is permitted. But what evidence exists that restoration science and practice can reliably, or even feasibly, achieve the goal of ‘no net loss’ of biodiversity, and under what circumstances are successes and failures more likely? Using recent reviews of the restoration ecology literature, we examine the effectiveness of restoration as an approach for offsetting biodiversity loss, and conclude that many of the expectations set by current offset policy for ecological restoration remain unsupported by evidence. We introduce a conceptual model that illustrates three factors that limit the technical success of offsets: time lags, uncertainty and measurability of the value being offset. These factors can be managed to some extent through sound offset policy design that incorporates active adaptive management, time discounting, explicit accounting for uncertainty, and biodiversity banking. Nevertheless, the domain within which restoration can deliver ‘no net loss’ offsets remains small. A narrowing of the gap between the expectations set by offset policies and the practice of offsetting is urgently required and we urge the development of stronger links between restoration ecologists and those who make policies that are reliant upon restoration science. Keywords:Compensatory habitat - Conservation policy - Mitigation banking - Environmental risk - No net loss - Restoration success
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Call for a climate culture shift
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A new book describes the rapid reshaping of human priorities needed to save the planet from global warming. Some of that change is already under way at the community level, explains Robert Costanza.
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Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere
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Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence. The plausibility of a planetary-scale ‘tipping point’ highlights the need to improve biological forecasting by detecting early warning signs of critical transitions on global as well as local scales, and by detecting feedbacks that promote such transitions. It is also necessary to address root causes of how humans are forcing biological changes.
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Civil conflicts are associated with the global climate
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It has been proposed that changes in global climate have been responsible for episodes of widespread violence and even the collapse of civilizations 1,2. Yet previous studies have not shown that violence can be attributed to the global climate, only that random weather events might be correlated with conflict in some cases 3–7. Here we directly associate planetary-scale climate changes with global patterns of civil conflict by examining the dominant inter- annual mode of the modern climate 8–10, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Historians have argued that ENSO may have driven global patterns of civil conflict in the distant past11–13, a hypothesis that we extend to the modern era and test quantitatively. Using data from 1950 to 2004, we show that the probability of new civil conflicts arising throughout the tropics doubles during El Nino years relative to La Nina years. This result, which indicates that ENSO may have had a role in 21% of all civil conflicts since 1950, is the first demonstration that the stability of modern societies relates strongly to the global climate.
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A systems approach to evaluating the air quality co-benefits of US carbon policies
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Because human activities emit greenhouse gases (GHGs) and conventional air pollutants from common sources, policy designed to reduce GHGs can have co-benefits for air quality that may offset some or all of the near-term costs of GHG mitigation. We present a systems approach to quantify air quality co-benefits of US policies to reduce GHG (carbon) emissions. We assess health-related benefits from reduced ozone and particulate matter (PM2.5) by linking three advanced models, representing the full pathway from policy to pollutant damages. We also examine the sensitivity of co-benefits to key policy- relevant sources of uncertainty and variability. We find that monetized human health benefits associated with air quality improvements can offset 26–1,050% of the cost of US carbon policies. More flexible policies that minimize costs, such as cap-and-trade standards, have larger net co-benefits than policies that target specific sectors (electricity and transportation). Although air quality co-benefits can be comparable to policy costs for present-day air quality and near-term US carbon policies, potential co-benefits rapidly diminish as carbon policies become more stringent.
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Evolution of natural and social science interactions in global change research programs
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Efforts to develop a global understanding of the functioning of the Earth as a system began in the mid-1980s. This effort necessitated linking knowledge from both the physical and biological realms. A motivation for this development was the growing impact of humans on the Earth system and need to provide solutions, but the study of the social drivers and their consequences for the changes that were occurring was not incorporated into the Earth System Science movement, despite early attempts to do so. The impediments to integration were many, but they are gradually being overcome, which can be seen in many trends for assessments, such as the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as well as both basic and applied science programs. In this development, particular people and events have shaped the trajectories that have occurred. The lessons learned should be considered in such emerging research programs as Future Earth, the new global program for sustainability research. The transitioning process to this new program will take time as scientists adjust to new colleagues with different ideologies, methods, and tools and a new way of doing science.
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Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems
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Integrated studies of coupled human and natural systems reveal new and complex patterns and processes not evident when studied by social or natural scientists separately. Synthesis of six case studies from around the world shows that couplings between human and natural systems vary across space, time, and organizational units. They also exhibit nonlinear dynamics with thresholds, reciprocal feedback loops, time lags, resilience, heterogeneity, and surprises. Furthermore, past couplings have legacy effects on present conditions and future possibilities.
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Climate Change Conversations
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THE THOUSANDS OF PRESENTATIONS AT NEXT WEEK’S MEETING OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY (ACS) in New Orleans exemplify one of the many ways scientists converse among themselves
about the most recent advances in science. Science and technology continue to reshape the
world we live in, and appreciating how these changes, both intended and unintended, come
about is a necessity for all citizens in a democratic society. Scientists have a responsibility to
help their fellow citizens understand what science and technology can and cannot do for them
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Scaling up from gardens: biodiversity conservation in urban environments
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As urbanisation increases globally and the natural environment becomes increasingly fragmented, the
importance of urban green spaces for biodiversity conservation grows. In many countries, private gardens area major component of urban green space and can provideconsiderable biodiversity benefits. Gardens and
adjacent habitats form interconnected networks and a landscape ecology framework is necessary to understand the relationship between the spatial configuration of garden patches and their constituent biodiversity. A scale-dependent tension is apparent in garden management, whereby the individual garden is much smaller than the unit of management needed to retain viable populations. To overcome this, here we suggest mechanisms for encouraging ‘wildlife-friendly’ management of collections of gardens across scales from the neighbourhood to the city.
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