scholarly journals Foresight is required to enforce sustainability under time-delayed biodiversity loss

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.-S. Lafuite ◽  
C. de Mazancourt ◽  
M. Loreau
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Basin Of Attraction ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Relaxation Rates ◽  
Lag Effects ◽  
Ecological Feedbacks ◽  
Mixed Equilibria

AbstractNatural habitat loss and fragmentation generate a time-delayed loss of species and associated ecosystem services. Since social-ecological systems (SESs) depend on a range of ecosystem services, lagged ecological dynamics may affect their long-term sustainability. Here, we investigate the role of consumption changes in sustainability enforcement, under a time-delayed ecological feedback on agricultural production. We use a stylized model that couples the dynamics of biodiversity, technology, human demography and compliance to a social norm prescribing sustainable consumption. Compliance to the sustainable norm reduces both the consumption footprint and the vulnerability of SESs to transient overshoot-and-collapse population crises. We show that the timing and interaction between social, demographic and ecological feedbacks govern the transient and long-term dynamics of the system. A sufficient level of social pressure (e.g. disapproval) applied on the unsustainable consumers leads to the stable coexistence of unsustainable and sustainable or mixed equilibria, where both defectors and conformers coexist. Under bistability conditions, increasing time delays reduces the basin of attraction of the mixed equilibrium, thus resulting in abrupt regime shifts towards unsustainable pathways. Given recent evidence of large ecological relaxation rates, such results call for farsightedness and a better understanding of lag effects when studying the sustainability of coupled SESs.

scholarly journals Delayed behavioural shifts undermine the sustainability of social–ecological systems

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1868) ◽  
pp. 20171192 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.-S. Lafuite ◽  
C. de Mazancourt ◽  
M. Loreau
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Habitat Destruction ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Ecological Feedbacks ◽  
Mixed Equilibria

Natural habitat destruction and fragmentation generate a time-delayed loss of species and associated ecosystem services. As social–ecological systems (SESs) depend on a range of ecosystem services, lagged ecological dynamics may affect their long-term sustainability. Here, we investigate the role of consumption changes for sustainability, under a time-delayed ecological feedback on agricultural production. We use a stylized model that couples the dynamics of biodiversity, technology, human demography and compliance with a social norm prescribing sustainable consumption. Compliance with the sustainable norm reduces both the consumption footprint and the vulnerability of SESs to transient overshoot-and-collapse population crises. We show that the timing and interaction between social, demographic and ecological feedbacks govern the transient and long-term dynamics of the system. A sufficient level of social pressure (e.g. disapproval) applied on the unsustainable consumers leads to the stable coexistence of unsustainable and sustainable or mixed equilibria, where both defectors and conformers coexist. Under bistability conditions, increasing extinction debts reduces the resilience of the system, thus favouring abrupt regime shifts towards unsustainable pathways. Given recent evidence of large extinction debts, such results call for farsightedness and a better understanding of time delays when studying the sustainability of coupled SESs.

scholarly journals Extreme contagion in global habitat clearance

2009 ◽  
Vol 277 (1684) ◽  
pp. 1081-1085 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth H. Boakes ◽  
Georgina M. Mace ◽  
Philip J. K. McGowan ◽  
Richard A. Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Habitat Destruction ◽  
Neighbouring Cell ◽  
Global Pattern ◽  
Threatening Processes ◽  
Destructive Processes

Habitat clearance remains the major cause of biodiversity loss, with consequences for ecosystem services and for people. In response to this, many global conservation schemes direct funds to regions with high rates of recent habitat destruction, though some also emphasize the conservation of remaining large tracts of intact habitat. If the pattern of habitat clearance is highly contagious, the latter approach will help prevent destructive processes gaining a foothold in areas of contiguous intact habitat. Here, we test the strength of spatial contagion in the pattern of habitat clearance. Using a global dataset of land-cover change at 50 × 50 km resolution, we discover that intact habitat areas in grid cells are refractory to clearance only when all neighbouring cells are also intact. The likelihood of loss increases dramatically as soon as habitat is cleared in just one neighbouring cell, and remains high thereafter. This effect is consistent for forests and grassland, across biogeographic realms and over centuries, constituting a coherent global pattern. Our results show that landscapes become vulnerable to wholesale clearance as soon as threatening processes begin to penetrate, so actions to prevent any incursions into large, intact blocks of natural habitat are key to their long-term persistence.

scholarly journals Agroecological practices for whole-system sustainability.

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (005) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Hawes
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
System Integration ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Management Options ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Intensive Farming

Abstract Current food production systems are major contributors to the environmental degradation that leads to climate change and biodiversity loss. Levels of production required for future food security cannot be met by further increases in inputs of non-renewable resources. The world's food crops must therefore be managed in a sustainable way that maintains long-term ecological functioning, including nutrient, carbon and water cycles, soil quality, primary productivity, microbe-plant associations, pest and pathogen regulation, pollination and arable food web resilience. All of these are determined by agronomic practices at local and regional scales, and all are sustained by the abundance, diversity and functional composition of plants, microbes and invertebrates in the farmed ecosystem. Presence of viable populations and communities of these organisms is therefore essential for system resilience. Long-term sustainability must rely more heavily on the internal generation of products and regulatory ecosystem services than on external inputs. Fully closed systems are impossible to achieve in agriculture as the product is removed for human consumption. There is ample evidence, however, that semi-closed, regenerative, systems can harness the ecosystem services provided by functional biodiversity to enhance crop production whilst simultaneously improving environmental quality. Here, agroecological alternatives to intensive farming practices are reviewed, focusing on key functional indicators and whole-system integration of practical management options designed to achieve multiple beneficial outcomes at field and farm scales.

Application of payment for ecosystem services in China’s rangeland conservation initiatives: a social-ecological system perspective

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanbo Li ◽  
Mingming Fan ◽  
Wenjun Li
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Basin Of Attraction ◽  
Ecological System ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Payment For Ecosystem Services ◽  
Pastoral Systems ◽  
System Perspective ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Massive Scale

The Chinese government has adopted Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) as a main approach for preventing or restoring rangelands perceived as undergoing degradation on a massive scale. Using the PES project, known as the ‘retire livestock, restore rangeland’ project in Alxa of Inner Mongolia as an example, the long-term ecological consequences of such projects is assessed, and the causes of the associated problems from the perspective of social-ecological system explored. Study findings demonstrate that PES, as used in the case study area, is unlikely to achieve the expected outcome of rangeland restoration in the long term. The root cause of such failure is that the PES approach focuses on end-point ecosystem services (outputs), while at the same time decoupling the feedbacks among social and ecological systems that are the key to generating such services. This drives the overall social-ecological system into an undesirable basin of attraction. It is concluded that a PES program for pastoral systems should aim to improve resilience of such a coupled social-ecological system to external shocks and changes, instead of simply maintaining ecological services without considering the origins of such services in the inter-relationship of humans and environment. It is argued that ‘Payment for Ecosystem Services’ should be displaced by ‘Payment for Social-ecological System Resilience’ in future policy discussions.

scholarly journals A Study on the Trend of Domestic Waste Generation and the Recognition of Recycling Priorities in Korea

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1732
Author(s):  
Seok-ho Jung ◽  
Mee-hye Lee ◽  
Seong-ho Lee ◽  
Ji Whan Ahn
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Waste Recycling ◽  
Household Waste ◽  
Waste Generation ◽  
Analytic Hierarchy ◽  
Sustainable Consumption And Production ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Scrap Metals ◽  
Hierarchy Process

In September 2015, the United Nations included ‘sustainable consumption and production’ as part of its 12th goal of sustainable development. The EU announced its Circular Economic Package in December 2015 to move from the existing linear economic structure to the net environmental system. Recycling of household waste has become more significant as a circular economic policy has been implemented to reflow waste into the economy through recycling worldwide. In this study, Korea’s household waste generation for 20 years from 1998 to 2017 was analyzed through statistical techniques. Waste generation tended to increase in the order of plastics and cans, and papers tended to decrease. The amount of bottle wastes has been on the decline after increasing. A questionnaire survey on recycling priority was conducted on 261 people, including participants in the EARTH-2019 recycling experience hall, using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique. According to the survey, the recycling priorities of six types of household waste are (first) plastic, (second) cans, viny, scrap metals, (third) paper, and (fourth) bottles. Statistical analysis of mid- to long-term household waste generation and AHP-based household waste recycling priority survey results can be used as basic data, such as environmental analysis in Korea’s recycling-related policies and research.

scholarly journals Virtual pollination trade uncovers global dependence on biodiversity of developing countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. eabe6636
Author(s):  
F. D. S. Silva ◽  
L. G. Carvalheiro ◽  
J. Aguirre-Gutiérrez ◽  
M. Lucotte ◽  
K. Guidoni-Martins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Ecosystem Health ◽  
Trade Flow ◽  
Virtual Water ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Online Tool ◽  
Mutual Dependence ◽  
Development Level

Nations’ food consumption patterns are increasingly globalized and trade dependent. Natural resources used for agriculture (e.g., water, pollinators) are hence being virtually exchanged across countries. Inspired by the virtual water concept, we, herein, propose the concept of virtual biotic pollination flow as an indicator of countries’ mutual dependence on biodiversity-based ecosystem services and provide an online tool to visualize trade flow. Using information on 55 pollinator-dependent crop markets (2001–2015), we show that countries with higher development level demand high levels of biodiversity-based services to sustain their consumption patterns. Such patterns are supported by importation of virtual biotic pollination (up to 40% of national imports of pollinator-dependent crops) from developing countries, stimulating cropland expansion. Quantifying virtual pollination flow can help develop new global socioeconomic policies to meet the interconnected challenges of biodiversity loss, ecosystem health, and social justice.

scholarly journals Expansion of Policy Domain of Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP): Challenges and Opportunities for Policy Design

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6763
Author(s):  
Yasuhiko Hotta ◽  
Tomohiro Tasaki ◽  
Ryu Koide
Keyword(s):  
Policy Design ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Pollution Prevention ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Policy Domain ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Sustainable Consumption And Production ◽  
Transition Policy

Since 2015, the international policy community has started to agree on international agreements with ambitious middle-term and long-term goals, highly relevant to sustainable consumption and production (SCP) such as those seen in the Paris Agreement, SDGs, and the plastic-related agreements at the G7 and G20 processes. Along with this trend, there has been growing attention given to socio-technical system change or “transition”. Policy debate is putting more focus on the need to change consumption and production patterns and deal with various ecological consequences within planetary boundaries such as decarbonization, absolute reduction in material throughput, or creation of a plastic-free society. This paper examines the expansion of the policy domain of SCP in three phases; SCP focusing on pollution control and cleaner production (SCP 1.0), SCP from the perspective of product lifecycle (SCP 2.0), and SCP focusing on systematic changes in socio-technical systems driving consumption and production (SCP 3.0). The potential impact of a wider SCP policy domain can be comparable to the historical shift in discourse related to ecological modernization theory from pollution prevention to efficiency. This emerging trend corresponds to the need for a fresh approach to policy design which can facilitate transition to sustainability.

scholarly journals How Do Trade-Offs and Synergies between Ecosystem Services Change in the Long Period? The Case Study of Uxin, Inner Mongolia, China

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 6041 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhang ◽  
Li ◽  
Buyantuev ◽  
Bao ◽  
Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Inner Mongolia ◽  
Stepwise Regression ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Development And Utilization ◽  
Long Term Trends

Ecosystem services management should often expect to deal with non-linearities due to trade-offs and synergies between ecosystem services (ES). Therefore, it is important to analyze long-term trends in ES development and utilization to understand their responses to climate change and intensification of human activities. In this paper, the region of Uxin in Inner Mongolia, China, was chosen as a case study area to describe the spatial distribution and trends of 5 ES indicators. Changes in relationships between ES and driving forces of dynamics of ES relationships were analyzed for the period 1979–2016 using a stepwise regression. We found that: the magnitude and directions in ES relationships changed during this extended period; those changes are influenced by climate factors, land use change, technological progress, and population growth.

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