Georgina M Mace

• D. Phil; BSc
• University College London

The lack of progress in reversing the declining global trend in biodiversity is partly due to a mismatch between how living nature is conceived and valued by the conservation movement on the one hand, and by many different people, including marginalized communities, on the other. Addressing this problem calls for a pluralistic perspective on biodiv...

Given the failure of the world’s governments to improve the status of biodiversity by 2020, a new strategic plan for 2030 is being developed. In order to be successful, a step-change is needed to not just simply halt biodiversity loss, but to bend the curve of biodiversity loss to stable or increasing species’ populations. Here, we propose a framew...

It is now widely recognised that components of the environment play the role of economic assets, termed natural capital, that are a foundation of social and economic development. National governments monitor the state and trends of natural capital through a range of activities including natural capital accounting, national ecosystem assessments, ec...

It is now widely recognised that components of the environment play the role of economic assets, termed natural capital, that are a foundation of social and economic development. National governments monitor the state and trends of natural capital through a range of activities including natural capital accounting, national ecosystem assessments, ec...

Non-technical summary Ecosystems across the globe are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as are the communities that depend on them. However, ecosystems can also protect people from climate change impacts. As the evidence base strengthens, nature-based solutions (NbS) are increasingly prominent in climate change policy, especially in deve...

Although health, development, and environment challenges are interconnected, evidence remains fractured across sectors due to methodological and conceptual differences in research and practice. Aligned methods are needed to support Sustainable Development Goal advances and similar agendas. The Bridge Collaborative, an emergent research-practice col...

Ecosystems are not merely vulnerable to climate change but, if sustainably restored and protected, are a major source of human resilience. Not only is the evidence-base for the importance of these “Nature-based Solutions” (NbS) growing rapidly, but NbS are featuring with increasing prominence in global climate change policy. Here we report on the p...

Although health, development, and environment challenges are interconnected, evidence remains fractured across sectors due to methodological and conceptual differences in research and practice. Aligned methods are needed to support Sustainable Development Goal advances and similar agendas. The Bridge Collaborative, an emergent research-practice col...

Although health, development, and environment challenges are interconnected, evidence remains fractured across sectors due to methodological and conceptual differences in research and practice. Aligned methods are needed to support Sustainable Development Goal advances and similar agendas. The Bridge Collaborative, an emergent research-practice col...

Climate-change-driven alterations in the extent and intensity of extreme weather events may have catastrophic consequences for primate populations. Using a trait-based approach, we assessed the vulnerability of the world’s 607 primate taxa to effects of cyclones and droughts—two types of extreme climatic events that are expected to increase and/or...

Ecosystems are not merely vulnerable to climate change but, if sustainably restored and protected, are a major source of human resilience. Not only is the science evidence-base for this perspective growing rapidly, but ecosystems are featuring with increasing prominence in global climate change policy. Of 167 climate pledges submitted by the signat...

A multidisciplinary examination of alternative framings of environmental problems, with using examples from forest, water, energy, and urban sectors. Does being an environmentalist mean caring about wild nature? Or is environmentalism synonymous with concern for future human well-being, or about a fair apportionment of access to the earth's resourc...

A multidisciplinary examination of alternative framings of environmental problems, with using examples from forest, water, energy, and urban sectors. Does being an environmentalist mean caring about wild nature? Or is environmentalism synonymous with concern for future human well-being, or about a fair apportionment of access to the earth's resourc...

The Lancet Countdown tracks progress on health and climate change and provides an independent assessment of the health effects of climate change, the implementation of the Paris Agreement, and the health implications of these actions. It follows on from the work of the 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change, which concluded that anthro...

Over half of globally threatened animal species have experienced rapid geographic range loss. Identifying the parts of species' distributions most vulnerable to extinction would benefit conservation planning. However, previous studies give little consensus on whether ranges decline to the core or edge. Here we build on previous work by using empiri...

The connected nature of social-ecological systems has never been more apparent than in today’s globalized world. The ecosystem service framework and associated ecosystem assessments aim to better inform the science–policy response to sustainability challenges. Such assessments, however, often overlook distant, diffuse and delayed impacts that are c...

The connected nature of social-ecological systems has never been more apparent than in today's globalized world. The ecosystem service framework and associated ecosystem assessments aim to better inform the science-policy response to sustainability challenges. Such assessments, however, often overlook distant, diffuse and delayed impacts that are c...

How can we tell if the ecosystem services upon which we rely are at risk of being lost, potentially permanently? Ecosystem services underpin human well-being, but we lack a consistent approach for categorizing the extent to which they are threatened. We present an assessment framework for assessing the degree to which the adequate and sustainable p...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...

Figure S1: Database schema. Diversity data in yellow, GIS data in green and Catalogue of Life data in blue. The diversity tables datasource, study, site, measuredtaxon and diversitymeasurement follow the structure described in ‘Methods’ in the main text and in Hudson et al. (2014): a datasource is associated with one or more study records, each of...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...

Meeting the ever-increasing needs of the Earth’s human population without excessively reducing biological diversity is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, suggesting that newapproaches to biodiversity conservation are required. One idea rapidly gaining momentum-as well as opposition-is to incorporate the values of biodiversity into deci...

The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change is an international, multidisciplinary research collaboration between academic institutions and practitioners across the world. It follows on from the work of the 2015 Lancet Commission, which concluded that the response to climate change could be “the greatest global health oppor...

A dataset of 3,250,404 measurements, collated from 26,114 sampling locations in 94 countries and representing 47,044 species. The data were collated from 480 existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database was assemb...

Identifying local extinctions is integral to estimating species richness and geographic range changes and informing extinction risk assessments. However, the species occurrence records underpinning these estimates are frequently compromised by a lack of recorded species absences making it impossible to distinguish between local extinction and lack...

Key future research questions underpinning understanding of the values of biodiversity

Key future research questions underpinning understanding of the values of biodiversity

Key future research questions underpinning understanding of the values of biodiversity

Balancing the ever-increasing needs of the Earth's human population with the maintenance of the biological diversity that ultimately supplies those needs is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. The scale of this challenge has led to suggestions that a new approach to biodiversity conservation is needed. One idea rapidly gaining momentum—...

Ambitious response needed on climate front Letter to the Times – 16 th Dec 2015 Sir, The agreement reached in Paris shows there is now impressive global ambition to tackle climate change – with tough challenges ahead (Britain facing steeper emissions cuts; Dec 14). Further policy action is urgently required to transform ambition into reality. Unfor...

National and international efforts to develop natural capital accounts are proliferating. The newly agreed 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development echoes these efforts. Continued cooperation is needed to overcome key scientific and policy challenges.

Earth's natural systems represent a growing threat to human health. And yet, global health has mainly improved as these changes have gathered pace. What is the explanation? As a Commission, we are deeply concerned that the explanation is straightforward and sobering: we have been mortgaging the health of future generations to realise economic and d...

The 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change has been formed to map out the impacts of climate change, and the necessary policy responses, in order to ensure the highest attainable standards of health for populations worldwide. This Commission is multidisciplinary and international in nature, with strong collaboration between academic ce...

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Table S2. Justification for risk register scoring and references used to support the scoring.

Table S1. Justification for prioritization of functional relationships between each broad habitat type, benefit and characteristic.

Three of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) concerned health. There is only one health goal in 17 proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Critiques of the MDGs included missed opportunities to realise positive interactions between goals. Here we report on an interdisciplinary analytical review of the SDG process, in which experts...

We present the results of a review of the empirical evidence and of the state of knowledge regarding the mechanisms linking ecosystem services and poverty alleviation. The review was undertaken to determine the state of current knowledge about the scale and nature of these linkages, and focus the future research agenda. Research has, to date, focus...

Natural capital is essential for goods and services on which people depend. Yet pressures on the environment mean that natural capital assets are continuing to decline and degrade, putting such benefits at risk. Systematic monitoring of natural assets is a major challenge that could be both unaffordable and unmanageable without a way to focus effor...

Data S1. Data extract.

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeograph...

An age-old conflict around a seemingly simple question has resurfaced: why do we conserve nature? Contention around this issue has come and gone many times, but in the past several years we believe that it has reappeared as an increasingly acrimonious debate between, in essence, those who argue that nature should be protected for its own sake (intr...

Predictive frameworks of climate change extinction risk generally focus on the magnitude of climate change a species is expected to experience and the potential for that species to track suitable climate. A species' risk of extinction from climate change will depend, in part, on the magnitude of climate change the species experiences, its exposure....

Changes in the perception and goals of nature conservation require a solid scientific basis

Ecosystem services can provide a wide range of benefits for human well-being, including provisioning, regulating and cultural services and benefitting both private and public interests in different sectors of society. Biophysical, economic and social factors all make it unlikely that multiple needs will be met simultaneously without deliberate effo...

This chapter reviews biodiversity science concepts that lead to both definitions and metrics for tracking change. Beyond its general meaning, the term “biodiversity” is now common in a wide range of situations, from ecology, through conservation biology, nature conservation, environmental sciences, and environmental policy. Common approaches to mea...

Human societies, and their well-being, depend to a significant extent on the state of the ecosystems that surround them. These ecosystems are changing rapidly usually in response to anthropogenic changes in the environment. To determine the likely impact of environmental change on ecosystems and the best ways to manage them, it would be desirable t...

Tackling global problems requires a fresh approach, argues Georgina Mace, as the British Ecological Society celebrates its centenary.

Mangrove forest restoration and rehabilitation programs are increasingly undertaken to re-establish ecosystem services in the context of community-based biodiversity conservation. Restoration is returning a habitat to the most natural condition, whereas rehabilitation often focuses on optimising ecosystem services alongside biodiversity. With many...

There are increasing concerns that global environmental limits may soon be met as a result of increasing numbers of people coupled with increasing consumption of resources. However, the current level and rates of growth in both consumption and population vary systematically among countries grouped according to income levels. Many high income countr...

Packer et al. reported that fenced lion populations attain densities closer to carrying capacity than unfenced populations. However, fenced populations are often maintained above carrying capacity, and most are small. Many more lions are conserved per dollar invested in unfenced ecosystems, which avoid the ecological and economic costs of fencing.

Tracking trends in the abundance of wildlife populations is a sensitive method for assessing biodiversity change due to the short time-lag between human pressures and corresponding shifts in population trends. This study tests for proposed associations between different types of human pressures and wildlife population abundance decline-curves and i...

Habitat loss imperils species both locally and globally, so protection of intact habitat is critical for slowing the rate of biodiversity decline. Globally, more than 150,000 protected areas have been designated with a goal of protecting species and ecosystems, but whether they can continue to achieve this goal as human impacts escalate is unknown....

A rapid review of the current literature on the links between climate change, ecosystem services (ES) and poverty alleviation has identified 41 papers. Of these, 19 were considered relevant as they specifically discussed the linkages between ES and poverty and the influence of climate change on that relationship. The papers reviewed focused on a li...

This chapter discusses how more effective multilateral biodiversity agreements might be built post-2010, including creating targets that are likely to have more impact, and enhancing the links between science and policy. The chapter talks about three sets of biodiversity targets. First one is ‘red’ targets to address changes in biodiversity that ha...

This chapter first discusses four different kinds of methods used to determine the impact of climate change on species. The four methods are comparing observed population and distribution changes with those predicted under climate change, climate envelope models, criteria-based methods, and susceptibility or vulnerability frameworks. The climate en...

There is robust evidence that climate change will modify the frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events. The consequences for terrestrial biota may be dramatic, but are yet to be elucidated. The well-established IUCN Red List does not, for example, include any explicit quantification of the current level of exposure to extreme climatic even...

Ecological principles must govern sustainability, yet sustainability science is largely concerned with social-environmental interactions and barely considers physical limits on resource use. Whether it is possible to overcome such limits can be contested, but the issues raised by a macroecological perspective should be a fundamental part of the Uni...

Highlights ► Human well-being depends on multiple ecosystem services, many of them being underpinned by biodiversity. ► Biodiversity continues to be lost at an unprecedented rate. ► Decision-makers and policy-makers require sound scientific foundation to secure the planet's biodiversity and ecosystem services, while contributing to human well-being...

After the collective failure to achieve the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD’s) 2010 target to substantially reduce biodiversity losses, the CBD adopted a plan composed of five strategic goals and 20 “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, and Time-bound) targets, to be achieved by 2020. Here, an interdisciplinary group of sci...

The paper seeks to contribute to the expanding literature on ecosystem service assessment by considering its integration with economic analyses of such services. Focussing upon analyses for future orientated policy and decision making, we initially consider a single period during which ecological stocks are maintained at sustainable levels. The flo...

Boakes et al. compile and analyze a historical dataset of 170,000 bird sightings over two centuries and show how changing trends in data gathering may confound a true picture of biodiversity change.

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...

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was a scientifically based global review of the state of the world's ecosystems and their ability to meet the needs of a growing human population. Requested by governments through four international conventions, the assessment examined a broad suite of ecosystem services. Sixty per cent of 24 ecosystem services a...

Previous studies of relative brain size in mammals have suggested an association with complex habitats and with low reproductive rate. In order to examine the causal relationships more thoroughly, a detailed examination of relative brain size variation in the genus Peromyscus was undertaken. Endocranial volumes were used to estimate brain weight fo...

The system used for classifying species according to their risk of extinction in international Red Lists is currently being revised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The proposed system is based around a set of quantitative criteria and aims to provide a more explicit and objective method that can be applied across a wide varie...

Abstract: The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species was increasingly used during the 1980s to assess the conservation status of species for policy and planning purposes. This use stimulated the development of a new set of quantitative criteria for listing species in the categories of threat: critically...

Recent attempts at projecting climate change impacts on biodiversity have used the IUCN Red List Criteria to obtain estimates of extinction rates based on projected range shifts. In these studies, the Criteria are often misapplied, potentially introducing substantial bias and uncertainty. These misapplications include arbitrary changes to temporal...