Assessing risks to biodiversity in a changing world
Keynote by Dr Emily Nicholson
Biodiversity around the world is in decline. Understanding risks to biodiversity is a pre-requisite for effective action to slow rates of loss, secure ecosystem services and manage ecosystems. For the last two decades, the conservation community has applied an effective, credible and universally adopted tool for assessing risks to species: the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
In this presentation, Dr Emily Nicholson will outline the development of an analogous tool for assessing risks to ecosystems, the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, which was adopted by the IUCN as the global standard in 2014. The approach was developed in response to a need for a consistent and scientific approach to assessing complex systems, that is also readily applied across diverse marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems, where information is scarce and uncertain, and by conservation practitioners.
The Red List of Ecosystems is now gaining traction around the world, and is being adopted by governments, non-government organisations and researchers, including in Australia. Emily will give an overview of the approach, current progress towards to goal of global coverage by 2025, and ongoing scientific challenges and research directions.