Biodiversity Loss: Drivers, Consequences and Mitigation

Abstract

The main direct drivers of biodiversity loss – land/sea-use change, direct exploitation, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species – are likely to have their greatest impacts on different kinds of species and ecosystems. I will discuss the likely consequences of these ‘signatures’, combined with the drivers’ relative importance in recent decades, for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Both these consequences and our limited ability to predict some of them have implications for how we should set biodiversity targets and actions, and for how we should monitor progress towards them. Focusing on the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems), I will show how protected areas and Indigenous Lands have been effective in conserving species and ecosystems; outline some of the challenges and opportunities presented by agriculture and restoration; and show how an ambitious set of integrated changes to agricultural supply, societal demand and global land-use policy could arrest – and even begin to reverse – biodiversity declines.