Anthony Waldron

University of Cambridge | Cam

Working paper analysing the economic implications of the proposed 30% target for areal protection in the draft post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

The third installment of the ‘European Public Investment Outlook’ series is an important and timely publication that draws together recent analyses to recommend significant increases in public investment in green ventures. Compelling data from key economists affiliated with international organizations like the International Monetary Fund, European...

Aichi Target 11 committed governments to protect ≥17% of their terrestrial environments by 2020, yet it was rarely achieved, raising questions about the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework goal to protect 30% by 2030. Asia is a challenging continent for such targets, combining high biodiversity with dense human populations. Here, we evaluated a...

Ambitious conservation efforts are needed to stop the global biodiversity crisis. In this study, we estimate the minimum land area to secure important biodiversity areas, ecologically intact areas, and optimal locations for representation of species ranges and ecoregions. We discover that at least 64 million square kilometers (44% of terrestrial ar...

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for global environmental agreements is how higher-income and lower-income countries share the costs of implementing them. This problem has become particularly acute as biodiversity and climate ambitions have increased across recent COPs (Conferences of Parties). Here, we estimate the likely distribution of costs...

Is there a trade-off between spending on the green economy and an economy's strength? This paper addresses this question by estimating output multipliers for spending in clean energy and biodiversity conservation, and by comparing these to multipliers of spending on non-ecofriendly energy and land use activities. Using a new international dataset,...

The COVID‐19 pandemic, its impact on the global economy, and current delays in the negotiation of the post‐2020 global biodiversity agenda of the Convention on Biological Diversity heighten the urgency to build back better for biodiversity, sustainability, and well‐being. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ec...

A COVID-19 járvány világszerte drámai és soha nem látott hatást gyakorolt az egészségügyre és a gazdaságra. Sok kormány gazdasági mentőcsomagot állít össze, hogy segítse a normális működéshez való visszatérést, ám az IPBES (Biológiai Sokféleség és Ökoszisztéma-szolgáltatás Kormányközi Testület) 2019-ben elfogadott Globális Felmérése szerint a gazda...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic and unprecedented impacts on both global health and economies. Many governments are now proposing recovery packages to get back to normal, but the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Global Assessment indicated that business as usual has created widespread...

Quantifying the impact of habitat disturbance on ecosystem function is critical to understanding and predicting the future of tropical forests. Many studies have examined post‐disturbance changes in animal traits related to mutualistic interactions with plants, but the effect of disturbance on plant traits in diverse forests has received much less...

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research sp...

More ambitious conservation efforts are needed to stop the global degradation of ecosystems and the extinction of the species that comprise them. Here, we estimate the minimum amount of land needed to secure known important sites for biodiversity, Earth's remaining wilderness, and the optimal locations for adequate representation of terrestrial spe...

Reproductive site selection is a key determinant of fitness in many taxa. However, if the site characteristics that enhance offspring survival are detrimental to the parent’s survival or mating success, then complex evolutionary trade-offs occur. In the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, males of the treefrog species Aparasphenodon arapapa use the temporar...

AICc tables for all candidate models. (XLSX)

Cross-correlations between explanatory variables. (XLSX)

The influence of bromeliad tank depth on reproductive site preference at different water volumes. Panels show how the shape of the preference function for tank depth (i.e. probability of presence given tank depth) depends on the water volume in the tank: a = 25ile of water volume, b = 50ile (i.e. the median bromeliad water volume), c = 77ile, d = 9...

Raw data on frequency of bromeliads with Aparasphenodon arapapa males (used bromeliads) and without (not used bromeliads) according to the systematic sample. N values show the number of plants in each category. 0 = no litter/upright plants; 1 = small amount of litter/slightly inclined plants; 2 = large amount of litter but not enough to prevent an...

The influence of bromeliad water volume on reproductive site preference at different tank depths. (a) At the average (mean) bromeliad tank depth, male preference increases with water volume. (b) In bromeliads with a very deep tank, however (90th percentile is shown), high volumes of water reduce site preference. Rug plots at bottom show the empiric...

Raw data. MinD = minimum diameter; MaxL = maximum central tank length, NA = data not available. (TXT)

Supplementary Methods The response variable: biodiversity decline at the country scale Our analysis required us to measure changes in biodiversity status at the scale of sovereign countries but the standard measure we used of biodiversity change (change in Red List status 3,31,32) applies to species. An algorithm to convert species-level change to...

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/nature24295. The correction is a simple change in the abstract, where the subeditors had wrongly changed the description of the study period. The correct period is that described in the Methods: funding levels and socioeconomic predictors for 1992-2003 were used to explain biodiversity change for 1996-2008 (20...

Halting global biodiversity loss is central to the Convention on Biological Diversity and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, but success to date has been very limited. A critical determinant of success in achieving these goals is the financing that is committed to maintaining biodiversity; however, financing decisions are hindered by con...

To achieve global food security, we need to approximately double food production over the coming decades. Conventional agriculture is the mainstream approach to achieving this target but has also caused extensive environmental and social harms. The consensus is that we now need an agriculture that can “multi-functionally” increase food production w...

Background An extensive body of literature in the field of agro-ecology claims to show the positive effects that maintenance of ecosystem services can have on sustainably meeting future food demand, by making farms more productive and resilient, and contributing to better nutrition and livelihoods of farmers. In Africa alone, some research has esti...

Voluntary sustainability standards and certification offer a promising mechanism to mitigate the severe negative impacts of agricultural expansion and intensification on tropical biodiversity. From a conservation standpoint, certification of tropical agroforestry crops, especially coffee and cocoa, is of particular interest given the potentially hi...

The twin United Nations' Millennium Development Goals of biodiversity preservation and poverty reduction both strongly depend on actions in the tropics. In particular, traditional agroforestry could be critical to both biological conservation and human livelihoods in human-altered rainforest areas. However, traditional agroforestry is rapidly disap...

The News & Analysis stories “Fragile wetland will test Turkey's resolve in protecting biodiversity” and “For scientists, protests morph into fight for academic freedom” (J. Bohannon, 26 July, p. [332][1]) deserve to be set in a wider context. Turkey is covered by three global biodiversity

Inadequate funding levels are a major impediment to effective global biodiversity conservation and are likely associated with recent failures to meet United Nations biodiversity targets. Some countries are more severely underfunded than others and therefore represent urgent financial priorities. However, attempts to identify these highly underfunde...

Inadequate funding levels are a major impediment to effective global biodiversity conservation and are likely associated with recent failures to meet United Nations biodiversity targets. Some countries are more severely underfunded than others and therefore represent urgent financial priorities. However, attempts to identify these highly underfunde...

Global biodiversity conservation significantly depends on bringing conservation measures to the agricultural production systems that dominate the earth's surface. One of the leading candidates for wildlife-friendly farming in the megadiverse lowland tropics is shade-grown cocoa. However, tropical farmers increasingly believe that shade reduces yiel...

Global biodiversity conservation significantly depends on bringing conservation measures to the agricultural production systems that dominate the earth’s surface. One of the leading candidates for wildlife-friendly farming in the megadiverse lowland tropics is shade-grown cocoa. However, tropical farmers increasingly believe that shade reduces yiel...

Evolutionary lineages differ greatly in their net diversification rates, implying differences in rates of extinction and speciation. Lineages with a large average range size are commonly thought to have reduced extinction risk (although linking low extinction to high diversification has proved elusive). However, climate change cycles can dramatical...

Most models of allopatric speciation predict that the two daughter species will have range sizes different from each other's and potentially from that of their common ancestor. However, I find that this difference is less than that expected under a variety of null models of range evolution. Sister species' range values may therefore become more sim...

Most models of allopatric speciation predict that the two daughter species will have range sizes different from each other's and potentially from that of their common ancestor. However, I find that this difference is less than that expected under a variety of null models of range evolution. Sister species’ range values may therefore become more sim...