Convention on Biological Diversity

About: Convention on Biological Diversity is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2232 publications have been published within this topic receiving 65599 citations. The topic is also known as: CBD & United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

Criteria to evaluate the conservation value of strictly protected forest reserves in Central Europe

Abstract: A major goal of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is to improve the protection of biodiversity. One approach to meet this goal is the implementation of strictly protected forest reserves (SPFRs). Many countries have adopted this approach and set target values for SPFRs, for example Germany aims to set aside 5 % of the forest area by 2020 (BMU, Strategie zur Biologischen Vielfalt, 2007). The contribution of SPFRs to biodiversity conservation cannot be assessed without considering the quality or conservation value of these areas. One challenge lies in the selection of specific criteria to evaluate this contribution of existing SPFRs. For Central Europe we reviewed these specific evaluation criteria and their ecological theory and evidence underpinning their relevance for an assessment as well as the interrelations between criteria. In addition, we present a framework for the integration of these criteria into an evaluation process. To identify criteria typically used or recommended for the evaluation of SPFRs, we analyzed the international conventions and reviewed the scientific literature on biodiversity conservation, specifically on area selection, status assessment and gap analysis. Since nearly all criteria were interrelated and operate at different scales, we developed a coherent evaluation framework to integrate them. Within this framework the criteria cover the fundamental aspects: space (completeness and connectivity), time (habitat continuity and persistence), and function (naturalness, rarity/threat and representativeness). This approach, once it is complemented by indicators, may be used to evaluate the extent to which individual SPFRs as well as a system of SPFRs contribute to the protection of natural forest biodiversity at a national level. It may be particularly relevant for Central European countries with a similar ecological, historical and political context.

Goodness‐of‐fit measures of evenness: a new tool for exploring changes in community structure

Abstract: Growing concern about the fate of biodiversity, highlighted by the Convention on Biological Diversity's 2010 and 2020 targets for stemming biodiversity loss, has intensified interest in methods of assessing change in ecological communities through time. Biodiversity is a multivariate concept, which cannot be well-represented by a single measure. However, diversity profiles summarize the multivariate nature of multi-species datasets, and allow a more nuanced interpretation of biodiversity trends than unitary metrics. Here we introduce a new approach to diversity profiling. Our method is based on the knowledge that an ecological community is never completely even and uses this departure from perfect evenness as a novel and insightful way of measuring diversity. We plot our measure of departure as a function of a free parameter, to generate “evenness profiles”. These profiles allow us to separate changes due to dominant species from those due to rare species, and relate these patterns to shifts in overall diversity. This separation of the influence of dominance and rarity on overall diversity enables the user to uncover changes in diversity that would be masked in other methods. We discuss profiling techniques based on this parametric family, and explore its connections with existing diversity indices. Next, we evaluate our approach in terms of predicted community structure (following Tokeshi's niche models) and present an example assessing temporal trends in diversity of British farmland birds. We conclude that this method is an informative and tractable parametric approach for quantifying evenness. It provides novel insights into community structure, revealing the contributions of both rare and common species to biodiversity trends.

Implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Mesoamerica: environmental and developmental perspectives

Abstract: Mesoamerica (Southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama) is a culturally diverse region considered a conservation priority due to its biotic richness and high endemism. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) sets out obligations and objectives for national parties to cope with biodiversity reduction, and encourages these national parties to develop measures to conserve and manage biodiversity. This paper presents trends in Mesoamerican countries in the implementation of the CBD, specifically in relation to the general measures for conservation and sustainable use (Article 6), identification and monitoring (Article 7), and in situ conservation (Article 8) derived from examination of reports from the CBD National Reports unit, questionnaires to national focal points, and interviews in the field. In general, there was increased effort toward CBD implementation and related issues. The scientific capacity, political stability, and accessibility to resources in each country, however, influenced the rate at which capacity was being built and the relative importance governments afforded to each of the CBD articles. Lack of resources or institutional limitations are identified as major impediments to fulfilling obligations. The CBD is also poorly known among actors in civil society and at several levels of administration. Overall, Costa Rica and Mexico are exceptions in the region with regard to inventory and monitoring, and the efforts to incorporate biodiversity into broader intersectoral policies. However, the measures required to ensure the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from biodiversity are poorly developed, or not developed at all, in the region. It is pivotal that, since Mesoamerica is one of the poorest regions in the world, any attempt to conserve biodiversity in the region must include sustainable use and equity.

Beyond Rhetoric: State Sovereignty, Common Concern, and the Inapplicability of the Common Heritage Concept to Plant Genetic Resources

Abstract: Until the emergence of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992 and the FAO Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources in 2001, opinion had hardened in some quarters that the principle of a common heritage of mankind regulated international transfer of plant genetic resources. By a historical analysis of customary international law in the colonial age and the recent pedigree of the principle of commonheritage, this article points out the fallacies in such arguments and contends that plants have always been subject to various national jurisdictions. It has to be conceded, however, that contemporary developments in the field of international law relating to plant genetic resources foretell the emergence of a regime of multilateral relationships governing access to plant genetic resources. If it is to depart from its unfortunate history, such a regime ofmultilateral co-operationwould have to pay serious regard to the issue of equitable access to and sustainable use of plant genetic resources.