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Seeds of change: provocations for a new research agenda
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What has gone wrong with nature conservation and how do we bring about transformative change to create a more sustainable future? Which types of knowledge, ethics, principles and actions are needed to reverse the decline of biodiversity? And given the urgency to act, how can we harness them to sustain a just and diverse future for life on Earth?
These are the questions underlying Seeds of Change – provocations for a new research agenda, a compilation of expert reviews and essays generated by the Biodiversity Revisited initiative, led by the Luc Hoffmann Institute in collaboration with WWF, Future Earth, ETH Zürich Department of Environmental Systems Science, University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, and the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research at University College London.
The 30 essays and 6 reviews offer diverse, innovative insights and perspectives on biodiversity conservation from around the world covering six themes: concepts, narratives, science, governance, systems and futures.
The Biodiversity Revisited initiative aims to raise new awareness about biodiversity and how to conserve it, and will culminate in a five-year research and action agenda.
https://www.biodiversity-revisited.earth/
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... The central concept of health is the ability of a system and its parts to self-organise its key functions and maintain its integrity in the presence of stress [1,2]. Accordingly, the definition of grassland health should consider its individual components, their interaction, et al. (1992 [28]). ...
Simple Summary
Human life depends on the provision of ecosystem services from grasslands ecosystem, which have been threatened due to practices adopted by current farming systems. Researchers have thus pointed out the use of systems thinking and design theory to create more sustainable pastoral live-stock production systems that work within grasslands for the continuous delivery of multiple ecosystem services. Systems thinking is a holistic theory that brings different perspectives from a particular situation and design theory is a prescriptive theory that aims to achieve a defined goal by using specific tools and background. In this narrative review, we explain why the use of both theories would contribute to the creation of more sustainable livestock production systems and provide an overview of grasslands with the goal of creating the required design framework for the design of pastoral livestock production systems that enhance grassland health.
Abstract
Grasslands and ecosystem services are under threat due to common practices adopted by modern livestock farming systems. Design theory has been an alternative to promote changes and develop more sustainable strategies that allow pastoral livestock production systems to evolve continually within grasslands by enhancing their health and enabling the continuous delivery of multiple ecosystem services. To create a design framework to design alternative and more sustainable pastoral livestock production systems, a better comprehension of grassland complexity and dynamism for a diagnostic assessment of its health is needed, from which the systems thinking theory could be an important approach. By using systems thinking theory, the key components of grasslands—soil, plant, ruminant—can be reviewed and better understood from a holistic perspective. The description of soil, plant and ruminant individually is already complex itself, so understanding these components, their interactions, their response to grazing management and herbivory and how they contribute to grassland health under different climatic and topographic conditions is paramount to designing more sustainable pastoral livestock production systems. Therefore, by taking a systems thinking approach, we aim to review the literature to better understand the role of soil, plant, and ruminant on grassland health to build a design framework to diagnose and enhance grassland health under pastoral livestock production systems.
... These include impacts on health, livelihoods, shelter, economies, food and water resources, and security resulting from changes in extreme weather events and rising sea levels (IPCC, 2022). In light of these impacts, in addition to protecting biodiversity, conservation organizations have a moral imperative to address issues of environmental justice and with it the interests of communities (including vulnerable, Indigenous, and non-Indigenous communities) when addressing the impacts of climate change (Clement, 2021;Wyborn et al., 2020). A greater focus on the needs of groups that have historically been underrepresented and that are being most impacted by climate change will require greater power to be placed on local stakeholder groups and their value systems. ...
The field of conservation aims to protect biodiversity—the diversity of life on earth in all its forms. Traditional conservation objectives and measures have already been expanded and modified in response to shifting social values and climate‐related challenges. As climate change progresses, we argue that these changes will need to be accelerated. First, an even greater fraction of conservation objectives will need to prioritize the basic well‐being of humans, especially in areas where humans are strongly dependent on their natural surroundings. For example, urban biodiversity and low‐impact forms of agriculture and forestry that reconcile biodiversity and contributions to humans should increasingly be viewed as compatible with conservation objectives. Second, more conservation measures will need to allow for, and even foster, changes in biodiversity. Indeed, changing species' characteristics and biotic community composition are not only adaptive responses to inevitable climate change but will, in many instances, also be necessary to maintain functioning ecosystems. Conversely, attempts to maintain biodiversity in a historical state will likely become increasingly difficult, expensive, and possibly counterproductive. Finally, in addition to continuing climate adaptation work, conservation efforts will need to focus more on reducing atmospheric carbon concentrations. We explore how collectively these changes are transforming the field of conservation and how they have the potential to lead to a more just and sustainable world despite impending climate change.
This article is categorized under: Climate, Ecology, and Conservation > Conservation Strategies
Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Comparative Environmental Values
Climate and Development > Sustainability and Human Well‐Being
The research focuses on developing a learning approach, particularly in Islamic education, that emphasizes students’ engagement with their creative imaginations to realize Islamic values, especially in fostering environmental affection. This research methodology involves an interdisciplinary study with a qualitative approach in the form of library research. The data source for the research comprises literature on Islamic education, environmental education, and creative imagination, which is explored, collected, and analyzed through content analysis. The study's results indicate a correlation between the Islamic education, environmental education, and creative imagination. These aspects can be integrated to develop new learning approaches that leverage creative imagination, potentially enhancing students’ environmental affection. Educators, especially Islamic teachers exploring this learning approach, can stimulate and intervene effectively to optimize students’ environmental affection within the diverse context of Islamic education.
The global loss of biodiversity is one of the most important challenges facing humanity, and a multi-faceted strategy is needed to address the size and complexity of this problem. This paper draws on scholarship from the philosophy of science and environmental ethics to help address one aspect of this challenge: namely, the question of how to frame biodiversity loss in a compelling manner. The paper shows that the concept of biodiversity, like many scientific concepts, is value-laden in the sense that it tends to support some ethical or social values over others. Specifically, in comparison with other potential concepts, the biodiversity concept is tied more closely to the notion that nature has intrinsic value than to the idea that nature is valuable instrumentally or relationally. Thus, alternative concepts could prove helpful for communicating about biodiversity loss with those who emphasize different value systems. The paper briefly discusses five concepts that illustrate the potential for using different concepts in different contexts. Going forward, conservationists would do well to recognize the values embedded in their language choices and work with social scientists to develop a suite of concepts that can motivate the broadest swath of people to promote conservation.
Biodiversity research is replete with scientific studies depicting future trajectories of decline that have failed to mobilize transformative change. Imagination and creativity can foster new ways to address longstanding problems to create better futures for people and the planet.
Life on Earth is facing severe challenges. Human action is leading to a deterioration in natural resources and ecosystems, and widespread declines in populations of wild species. This presents an existential threat to humanity by undermining the capacity of biodiversity to support human well-being. The Biodiversity Revisited research and action agenda calls for new ways of thinking and acting to address the urgent, complex, and interconnected challenges facing humanity. Recognising the severe degradation in the diversity of life on Earth that sustains humanity, this agenda seeks to catch a changing tide in the biodiversity research community focussed on a more integrated and transformative approach to research and action. Biodiversity Revisited is a collaborative, thought leadership process to co-produce a new, integrated five-year research agenda to effectively sustain life on Earth. The collaborative process seeks to raise new awareness and thinking about biodiversity, from concept through measurement to implementation, as well as looking critically at the narratives, science and systems that underpin it. Biodiversity Revisited is an initiative of the Luc Hoffmann Institute, in collaboration with WWF, Future Earth, ETH Zürich Department of Environmental Systems Science, University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research at University College London and exists thanks to generous funding from the NOMIS Foundation, the MAVA Foundation and WWF International. https://luchoffmanninstitute.org/biodiversity-revisited/
This paper contributes to global debates on environmental governance by drawing on recent ontological scholarship to ask: What would it mean to ontologically engage the concept of environmental governance? By examining the ontological underpinnings of three environmental governance domains (land, water, biodiversity), we find that dominant contemporary environmental governance concepts and policy instruments are grounded in a modernist ontology which actively shapes the world, making certain aspects and relationships visible while invisibilizing others. We then survey ethnographic and other literature to highlight how such categories and their relations have been conceived otherwise and the implications of breaking out of a modernist ontology for environmental governance. Lastly, we argue that answering our opening question requires confronting the coloniality woven into the environmental governance project and consider how to instead embrace ontological pluralism in practice. In particular, we examine what taking seriously the right to self-determination enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) could mean for acknowledging Indigenous ontologies as systems of governance in their own right; what challenges and opportunities exist for recognizing and translating ontologies across socio-legal regimes; and how embracing the dynamism and hybridity of ontologies might complicate or advance struggles for material and cognitive justice.
This book focuses on the present and future challenges of managing ecosystem transformation on a planet where human impacts are pervasive. In this new epoch, the Anthropocene, the already rapid rate of species loss is amplified by climate change and other stress factors, causing transformation of highly-valued landscapes. Many locations are already transforming into novel ecosystems, where new species, interactions, and ecological functions are creating landscapes unlike anything seen before. This has sparked contentious debate not just about science, but about decision-making, responsibility, fairness, and human capacity to intervene.
Clement argues that the social and ecological reality of the Anthropocene requires modernised governance and policy to confront these new challenges and achieve ecological objectives. There is a real opportunity to enable society to cope with transformed ecosystems by changing governance, but this is notoriously difficult. Aimed at anyone involved in these conversations, be those researchers, practitioners, decision makers or students, this book brings together diffuse research exploring how to confront institutional change and ecological transformation in different contexts, and provides insight into how to translate governance concepts into productive pathways forward.
Sarah Clement is an environmental governance researcher and lecturer in environmental planning and management in the School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, UK. She also worked as an environmental consultant, researcher, and environmental policy advisor for 10 years in the USA and Australia.