Top priorities in biodiversity science agreed

By DIVERSITAS

• Creating criteria to identify, monitor, and report the most urgent cases of biodiversity and ecosystem service loss and how humanity can avoid or mitigate the problems. Researchers today lack a framework to identify the most serious cases of biodiversity loss, what's causing them, critical tipping points, the people most at risk, and potential interventions - including how to adapt to a fait accompli in some situations.
• Improving human efforts to defend biodiversity and ecosystem services in the midst of global change, while recognizing resource scarcity and competing demands. This includes accountable governance and management systems well informed of the trade-offs involved in decisions, studying how humanity in the past maintained biodiversity in the face of environmental and social changes, and promoting individual human behaviour to mitigate and adapt to biodiversity and ecosystem service losses.
• Understanding the factors underpinning the patterns, origins, functions and changes in biodiversity. This includes understanding biophysical processes and ecological features critical to specific ecosystem services, and how scientists should quantify ecosystem services in order to fully understand trade-offs?
• Creating an effective global network of biodiversity science. This requires national scientific networks in every world region (with a particular emphasis on mega-diverse countries), gender balance, young scientists, incorporation of indigenous and local knowledge, and participants from all relevant interdisciplinary fields (including social as well as natural sciences).