Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
areas of greatest importance in generating biodiversity are those of long-
term climatic stability, especially where they occur in tropical mountains
(Fjeldså and Lovett, 1997), which are incorporated in most approaches to
global conservation prioritization. A related hypothesis states that regions
with particularly high percentage endemism - tropical mountains and
islands - necessarily capture evolutionary process (Fa et al., 2004). The
development of metrics for the maintenance of evolutionary process is in
its infancy, and represents an emerging research front (Araújo, 2002).
A i nal dimension that will prove important to assess in the context of
global conservation prioritization concerns ecosystem services (Jepson and
Canney, 2001; Kareiva and Marvier, 2003; Odling-Smee, 2005). Although
the processes threatening biodiversity and ecosystem services are likely
similar, the relationship between biodiversity per se and ecosystem ser-
vices remains unresolved (Loreau et al., 2001). Thus, while it is important
to establish distinct goals for these conservation objectives (Sarkar, 1999),
identii cation of synergies between them is strategically vital. This research
avenue has barely been explored and questions of how global biodiversity
conservation priorities overlap with priority regions for carbon sequestra-
tion, climate stabilization, maintenance of water quality, minimization of
outbreaks of pests and diseases, and i sheries, for example, remain unan-
swered. However, the correspondence between conservation priorities and
human populations (Cincotta et al., 2000; Balmford et al., 2001; Baillie
et al., 2004) and poverty (Balmford et al., 2003; Baillie et al., 2004) is an
indication that the conservation of areas of high biodiversity priority will
deliver high local ecosystem service benei ts.
From global to local priorities
The establishment of global conservation priorities has been extremely
inl uential in directing resources towards broad regions. However, a
number of authors have pointed out that global conservation prioritiza-
tion has had little success in informing actual conservation implementa-
tion (Dinerstein and Wikramanayake, 1993; Mace et al., 2000; Jepson,
2001; Brummitt and Lughadha, 2003). Separate processes are necessary
to identify actual conservation targets and priorities at much i ner scales
(Supriatna, 2001), because even within a region as uniformly important
as (say) Madagascar, biodiversity and threats are not evenly distributed.
Bottom-up processes of identii cation of priorities are therefore essential
to ensure the implementation of area-based conservation (Whittaker et
al., 2005).
Indeed, numerous ef orts are underway to identify targets for conser-
vation implementation. Many focus on the site scale, drawing on two
decades of work across nearly 170 countries in the designation of
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