Climate Change and Conservation Biology as it Relates to Urban Environments

Samantha Noll,Michael Goldsby

doi:10.6035/recerca.2020.25.2.4

Abstract

Climate change continues to have recognizable impacts across the globe, as weather patterns shift and impacts accumulate and intensify. In this wider context, urban areas face significant challenges as they attempt to mitigate dynamic changes at the local level — changes such as those caused by intensifying weather events, the disruption of critical supplies, and the deterioration of local ecosystems. One field that could help urban areas address these challenges is conservation biology. However, this paper presents the argument that work in urban contexts may be especially difficult for conservation biologists. In light of current climate change predictions, conservation biology may need to abandon some of its core values in favor of commitments guiding urban ecology. More broadly, this essay aims to reconcile the goals of restoration and conservation, by reconceptualizing what an ecosystem is, in the context of a world threatened by global climate change.

Highlights

Climate change continues to have recognizable effects across the globe, as weather patterns shift and impacts accumulate and intensify (Nelson et al, 2013; EPA, n.d.)
Urban areas face significant challenges as they attempt to mitigate dynamic changes at the local level — changes such as those caused by intensifying weather events, the disruption of critical supplies, and the deterioration of local ecosystems (World Bank, 2010; Noll, 2018)
One field that could help urban areas better achieve the two common goals of reducing local and global impacts is conservation biology, as it is charged with the important job of managing ecosystems impacted by human activities and often takes on the tasks of developing, recommending, and implementing species and ecosystem management plans and strategies (Sandler, 2012)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Climate change continues to have recognizable effects across the globe, as weather patterns shift and impacts accumulate and intensify (Nelson et al, 2013; EPA, n.d.). Cities (as part of urban zones) across the globe are creating and adopting “sustainability” plans in an effort to reduce climate change impacts on urban citizens, ecologies, and infrastructure These proposals are by necessity contextual, but they predominantly share the two common strategies of a) mitigation, i.e., the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and b) adaptation, i.e., ameliorating the local impacts of climate change. One field that could help urban areas better achieve the two common goals of reducing local and global impacts is conservation biology, as it is charged with the important job of managing ecosystems impacted by human activities and often takes on the tasks of developing, recommending, and implementing species and ecosystem management plans and strategies (Sandler, 2012). Adjusting currently endangered ecosystems such that the ecosystem may weather increased climate stress

TO RESTORE OR CONSERVE

CONCLUSION