 |
BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM HEALTH
Maintaining diverse, productive and healthy ecosystems necessitates a fundamental change in management
strategy, from single species to whole ecosystem management.The challenge is to optimize the long-term
value of ecosystems to humans while protecting biological diversity and ecological processes. Over the
past decade, terms such as conservation biology, concepts of biodiversity, ecosystem health, and landscape
ecology have been refined by scientists and have become a more common part of the public vernacular. In
turn, as society has become more concerned about conserving ecosystems and their associated species,
resource management agencies have begun to shift scientific inquiries to the landscape level. There is
considerable need for science to better understand biodiversity and ecosystem processes; how humans affect
and are affected by these processes; and how to communicate this understanding to natural resource
managers and policymakers.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Knowledge of Biodiversity and Ecosystems
The federal government should develop and support programs
that:
- increase the capacity to conduct scientific research in key
disciplines including: taxonomy, systematics, ecosystem and
landscape ecology
- build capacity for resource science and management internationally,
as well as nationally
- increase efforts for interdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge
- increase understanding of linkages between biodiversity,
ecosystem productivity, and sustainable natural resource
management.
The federal government should sustain and coordinate a multi-agency
program to:
- inventory biological resources with a ten-fold funding
increase over current levels
- monitor biodiversity, including dissemination of information
on the state of the environment in a “report card” format
(possibly through a new Bureau of Environmental Statistics).
2. Landscape Science: Geographic Scale and Physical and Political Boundaries
The federal government should develop, sustain and coordinate
a multi-agency, cross-sectoral program to:
- better understand how. ecosystems are connected across
physical and political boundaries
- increase the capacity to manage and coordinate across
political boundaries
- synthesize and coordinate place-based research, including
more assessments at a regional scale.
3. Education and Public Awareness
The federal government should develop, sustain and coordinate a
multi-agency program in disciplinary and interdisciplinary education
and training about natural resources, including public education,
K-12 and higher education, and professional development.
4. Translation of Knowledge Between Science and Policy
The federal government should develop, sustain and coordinate a
multi-agency program with the goal of providing more effective
application and translation of science into management that would:
- increase the interface between policymakers and researchers
in design of science programs
- increase scientific input at all stages of policy process
- add more scientists in decisionmaker positions
- develop of a cadre of science-policy translators.
The federal government should sustain and coordinate a multi-agency
program directed towards better understanding of the
human dimensions (causes and consequences) of
environmental change and biodiversity.
5. Information Management and Synthesis
The National Academy of Sciences should study the methods
and associated standards used to assess and synthesize the state
of knowledge of biodiversity. There should be a cross-government
inventory of biodiversity and ecosystem databases and
research programs with a goal of increased efficiency and
compatibility and decreased duplication.
6. Stakeholder Participation
All of these programs should include meaningful and sustained
mechanisms to incorporate perspectives of diverse stakeholders,
particularly those outside the federal government.
| |
back