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The IUCN red list of ecosystems: motivations, challenges, and applications

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-05-01, 00:00 authored by D A Keith, J P Rodríguez, T M Brooks, M A Burgman, E G Barrow, Lucie Bland, P J Comer, J Franklin, J Link, M A Mccarthy, R M Miller, N J Murray, J Nel, Emily Nicholson, M A Oliveira-Miranda, T J Regan, K M Rodríguez-Clark, M Rouget, M D Spalding
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.

History

Journal

Conservation letters

Volume

8

Issue

3

Pagination

214 - 226

Publisher

Wiley

Location

Weinheim, Germany

ISSN

1755-263X

eISSN

1755-263X

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2015, Wiley