Ryan Blanchard

National Research Foundation, South Africa | NRF

Although invasive alien species have long been recognized as a major threat to nature and people, until now there has been no comprehensive global review of the status, trends, drivers, impacts, management and governance challenges of biological invasions. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)...

Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented in global biodiversity datasets, particularly regarding the impact of land use on species’ population abundances. Drawing on recent advances in expert elicitation to ensure data consistency, 200 experts were convened using a modified-Delphi process to estimate ‘intactness scores’: the remaining proportion of...

This Chapter provides an analysis and synthesis of how direct and indirect anthropogenic drivers of change in nature, along with natural drivers and biodiversity loss itself, are responsible for the transport, introduction, establishment and spread of invasive alien species. The chapter first outlines the conceptual and analytical framework and app...

Sustainability-focused research networks and communities of practice have emerged as a key response and strategy to build capacity and knowledge to support transformation towards more sustainable, just and equitable futures. This paper synthesises insights from the development of a community of practice on social-ecological systems (SES) research i...

Social-ecological systems (SES) research has emerged as an important area of sustainability science, informing and supporting pressing issues of transformation towards more sustainable, just and equitable futures. To date, much SES research has been done in or from the Global North, where the challenges and contexts for supporting sustainability tr...

Full pre-feasibility of ethanol supply for production of sustainable aviation fuel at an existing gas to liquids plants in South Africa

Many ecosystem services (ES) models exist to support sustainable development decisions. However, most ES studies use only a single modelling framework and, because of a lack of validation data, rarely assess model accuracy for the study area. In line with other research themes which have high model uncertainty, such as climate change, ensembles of...

Invasive alien species (IAS) are known to pose a serious threat to biodiversity, and reduce the ability of ecosystems to provide benefits to humans. In recognition of this threat and to address the impacts of IAS, Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted Aichi Biodiversity Target 9, which is dedicated to the control or eradic...

In the rapidly changing and uncertain world of the Anthropocene, positive visions of the future could play a crucial role in catalysing deep social-ecological transformations to help guide humanity towards more sustainable and equitable futures. This paper presents the outcomes from a novel visioning process designed to elicit creative and inspirat...

Faced with environmental degradation, governments worldwide are developing policies to safeguard ecosystem services (ES). Many ES models exist to support these policies, but they are generally poorly validated, especially at large scales, which undermines their credibility. To address this gap, we describe a study of multiple models of five ES, whi...

Non-technical summary There are significant challenges to retaining indigenous biodiversity and ecological infrastructure in African cities. These include a lack of formal protection and status for remnant ecologically functional patches rendering them open to ad hoc human settlement, which is in part linked to weak governance and management emergi...

Sitas, N., Z. V. Harmáčková, J. A. Anticamara, A. Arneth, R. Badola, R. Biggs, R. Blanchard, L. Brotons, M. Cantele, K. Coetzer, R. DasGupta, E. Den Belder, S. Ghosh, A. Guisan, H. Gundimeda, M. Hamann, P. A. Harrison, S. Hashimoto, J. Hauck, B. Klatt, K. Kok, R. M. Krug, A. Niamir, P. J. O'Farrell, S. Okayasu, I. Palomo, L. M. Pereira, P. Riordan,...

Enhancing the governance of social-ecological systems for more equitable and sustainable development is hindered by inadequate knowledge about how different social groups and communities rely on natural resources. We used openly accessible national survey data to develop a metric of overall dependence on natural resources. These data contain inform...

Global biodiversity targets have far-reaching implications for nature conservation worldwide. Scenarios and models hold unfulfilled promise for ensuring such targets are well founded and implemented; here, we review how they can and should inform the Aichi Targets of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and their reformulation. They offer two clear...

Scenario planning is a key approach for exploring the longer term consequences of nature-society interactions, and are used to inform policy making about the potential risks, opportunities and tradeoffs of different possible future pathways of change. Scenarios do not aim to forecast or predict the future, but rather to highlight how different pote...

Bush encroachment and alien plant invasions alter the composition and/or balance of species in natural ecosystems and impact biodiversity, land productivity and water availability. Therefore, the appropriate control and management of bush encroachment and alien plant invasions can restore ecosystems services and enhance the provision of timber and...

Liquid biofuel production will likely have its greatest impact through the large-scale changes in land use that will be required to meet the production of this energy source. In this study, we develop a framework which integrates species distribution models, land cover, land capability and various biodiversity conservation data to identify natural...

Since about 2005, there has been a growing enthusiasm around biofuel development within southern Africa, with almost all countries in the region initiating biofuel projects. The key driver for biofuel expansion in the region is its potential to boost rural development and national energy security and to improve national trade balances, given that i...

Aim The biophysical impacts of invasive Australian acacias and their effects on ecosystem services are explored and used to develop a framework for improved restoration practices. Location South Africa, Portugal and Chile. Methods A conceptual model of ecosystem responses to the increasing severity (density and duration) of invasions was developed...

The South African government, as part of its efforts to mitigate the effects of the ongoing energy crisis, has proposed that biofuels should form an important part of the country’s energy supply. The contribution of liquid biofuels to the national fuel supply is expected to be at least 2% by 2013. The Biofuels Industrial Strategy of the Republic of...

One of the environmental concerns associated with producing biofuels from alien plants is the risk of these species becoming invasive. We explored whether insights from commercial forestry and agroforestry could inform strategies to reduce future problems with invasive biofuel plants.The dynamics, dimensions, and extent of invasions of forestry spe...

The Working for Water programme is tasked with the important role of controlling invasive alien plants with an assumption that indigenous vegetation will recover naturally. This study assessed vegetation composition and structure following alien clearance in closed-stand invasion of riparian areas and a minimum of two years' passive recovery. Three...