Convention Of Biological Diversity Research Articles

Nature Loss in Southeast Asia: Aichi Targets and EPI

The Aichi biodiversity targets were established by the UN convention of biological diversity and consist of 20 specific targets to address and mitigate biodiversity loss across the globe. We consider countries in East and South Asia. Countries in East and South Asia are very different in size and level of economic development. As such Sustainable Development Goal challenges vary greatly across countries. The 2022 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) provides a quantitative basis for comparing, analyzing, and understanding environmental performance for 180 countries. The EPI score and rank these countries on their environmental performance using the most recent year of data available and calculate how these scores have changed over the previous decade. We determine the similarity between the country achievement rankings of the Aichi Targets and the EPI rankings.

Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture: The Role and Contribution of CREA (Italy) within the National Program RGV-FAO

Conservation, characterization and exploitation of agrobiodiversity are key factors to guarantee food security and face future challenges such as climate changes. These issues are the subject of a series of international agreements, such as the Convention of Biological Diversity, with its Nagoya Protocol, and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) adopted in 2001 and entered into force in 2004. Italy ratified the Treaty in 2004 and instituted a long-lasting program, RGV-FAO, to implement it. CREA is one of the three organizations involved in the RGV-FAO Program, together with the National Research Council (CNR) and Reti Semi Rurali. CREA maintains a total of 40,186 accessions including cereals, vegetables, fruits, forages, industrial crops, forest and woody crops, medicinal and aromatic plants, and their wild relatives. Accessions are conserved using different ex situ conservation systems (seeds, in vivo plants, vegetative organs and in vitro plantlets), and characterized using genetic, morpho-phenological and/or biochemical methods. Herein, we will present the CREA long-lasting program RGV-FAO with some examples of the use of plant genetic resources in breeding programs, including molecular approaches. Some critical issues related to access and benefit sharing in PGRFA, such as the Nagoya Protocol and the Digital Sequence Information, will be discussed, highlighting their potential impact on food security and on the advancement of knowledge.

Структура системы действующих и проблемы функционирования будущих особо охраняемых природных территорий Воронежской области

The Biological Diversity Convention and the National Strategy for the Conservation of Biodiversity in Russia have laid the basis for the implementation of large-scale scientific and practical research aimed at finding effective solutions to this issue. The creation of the SPNA network which includes federal, regional and local significance is one of the promising directions for the conservation, maintenance and reproduction of biodiversity at all levels. The Voronezh Region situated at the junction of forest-steppe and steppe zones, features complex floral, faunal complexes and a unique soil cover dominated by chernozems. The long-term agricultural use of the region’s soils has led to a reduction in areas with natural ecosystems. This has created the prerequisites for establishing a complex, extensive SPNA network in the Voronezh region. The establishment SPNA network is based on a comprehensive regulatory framework, which includes federal laws of the Russian Federation, resolutions of the Voronezh Region Government, the law of the Voronezh Region, orders of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Voronezh Region, etc. To date, the SPNA network comprises 256 protected areas, of which 4 are of federal significance, 211 are of regional significance, and 41 are of local significance. This structure of protected areas has positioned the Voronezh Region as one of the leaders in these indicators among the Central Chernozem Regions (ССR). The largest number was created in the Belgorod region – 332 objects, objects, accounting for 11.2% of its territory, the Voronezh region ranks second in terms of the number of objects and the third in terms of the share of protected areas relative to the total area. The functioning of existing and the creation of the new ones face several challenges, among which an important place is occupied by insufficient public awareness of the need to create protected areas as a tool for the conservation of nature and its biological diversity holds a significant place.

Implementing Biodiversity Offsetting in Alignment with the Mitigation Hierarchy – the Experience of Land Use Planning Law in New South Wales

Abstract Biodiversity offsetting is firmly established as an integral part of environmental law regimes across the world. Whether offsets are appropriate for a particular development is determined through the application of a mitigation hierarchy. Whilst a rich vein of scholarship exists dealing with the operation of the mitigation hierarchy in principle, the implementation of the mitigation hierarchy has received comparatively small coverage. From a legal perspective this prompts questions relating to the implementation of the mitigation hierarchy as part of the planning law process. This article critically examines the issue in the context of laws regulating biodiversity loss in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The article contributes to filling this gap through a critical analysis and evaluation of the statutory regime and specific examples of relevant case law in NSW where development applications have been rejected on the basis, broadly speaking, of failing to demonstrate adherence to the requirements of the mitigation hierarchy. The primary findings presented by the article maintain that the extent to which decision-makers can influence and enhance biodiversity protection through implementation of the mitigation hierarchy is inherently limited due to the underlying rationale and values of planning law. While the decisions carry value in terms of showing what might be reasonably expected from developers in terms of demonstrating how their development applications adhere to the mitigation hierarchy, change that has broader application and can be applied in a more objective manner must be provided through legislative or regulatory change. The experience of NSW can offer some lessons for the implementation of biodiversity offsets in different jurisdictions considering the recent 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) on the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

Evaluating global interest in biodiversity and conservation.

The first target of the Convention for Biological Diversity (Aichi target 1) was to increase public awareness of the values of biodiversity and actions needed to conserve it-a key prerequisite for other conservation targets. Monitoring success in achieving this target at a global scale has been difficult; however, increased digitization of human life in recent decades has made it easier to measure people's interests at an unprecedented scale and allows for a more comprehensive evaluation of Aichi target 1 than previously attempted. We used Google search volume data for over a thousand search terms related to different aspects of biodiversity and conservation to evaluate global interest in biodiversity and its conservation. We also investigated the correlation of interest in biodiversity and conservation across countries to variables related to biodiversity, economy, demography, research, education, internet use, and presence of environmental organizations. From 2013 to 2020, global searches for biodiversity components increased, driven mostly by searches for charismatic fauna (59% of searches were for mammal species). Searches for conservation actions, driven mostly by searches for national parks, decreased since 2019, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Economic inequality was negatively correlated with interest in biodiversity and conservation, whereas purchasing power was indirectly positively correlated with higher levels of education and research. Our results suggest partial success toward achieving Aichi target 1 in that interest in biodiversity increased widely, but not for conservation. We suggest that increased outreach and education efforts aimed at neglected aspects of biodiversity and conservation are still needed. Popular topics in biodiversity and conservation could be leveraged to increase awareness of other topics with attention to local socioeconomic contexts.

Engaging with the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing: recommendations for noncommercial biodiversity researchers

Abstract The Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing provide an international legal framework that aims to prevent misappropriation of the genetic resources of a country and ensure the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their use. The legislation was negotiated at the behest of lower-income, biodiverse countries to ensure that benefits derived from research and development of genetic resources from within their jurisdictions were equitably returned and could thereby incentivize conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Despite good intentions, however, rapid adoption of access and benefit-sharing measures at the national level, often without participatory strategic planning, has hampered noncommercial, international collaborative genetic research with counterproductive consequences for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. We outline how current implementation of the Convention of Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol affect noncommercial research, such as that conducted in many disciplines in biology, including mammalogy. We use a case study from Brazil, an early adopter, to illustrate some current challenges and highlight downstream consequences for emerging pathogen research and public health. Most emerging pathogens colonize or jump to humans from nonhuman mammals, but noncommercial research in zoonotic diseases is complicated by potential commercial applications. Last, we identify proactive ways for the mammalogical community to engage with the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol, through sharing of nonmonetary benefits and working with local natural history collections. Leveraging international scientific societies to collectively communicate the needs of biodiversity science to policy makers will be critical to ensuring that appropriate accommodations are negotiated for noncommercial research.

The Role of the Biological Diversity Convention in Mangroves Rehabilitation in Indonesia

Mangrove ecosystems are crucial to the management of coastal resources, particularly those of small islands. The destruction of mangrove forests is brought on by mangrove logging and the transformation of mangrove land into aquaculture areas. This is due to the economic demands of the local community. The government has made numerous efforts to protect and rehabilitate mangroves, including mangrove restoration in accordance with Regulation No. 03/MENHUT-V/2004 of the Minister of Forestry and Environment. However, its implementation has not been effective, especially if it is tied to the convention on biodiversity and the Sustainable Development Goals; the protection of mangroves continues to face numerous obstacles. The research methods employed are both empirical and normative. The results of this study indicate that the convention on biodiversity, which is the actual basis for mangrove rehabilitation, has not protected the area because (1) spatial planning does not accommodate mangrove protection; (2) public awareness is low; (3) law enforcement is ineffective; and (4) the problem of mangrove rehabilitation exists.

Douro wine-tourism engaging consumers in nature conservation stewardship: An immersive biodiversity experience

Wine tourism is a growing revenue side-stream for wine businesses and regions. It complements wine with a context of landscape, gastronomy, culture and history. Wine tourism generates an experience that transcends the material nature of wine. In 2022, the UN will hold the COP15 of the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) aiming to reverse nature and biodiversity loss, making the world nature- positive by 2030 and planning for full recovery by 2050. Wine tourism develops the engagement of consumers with wine in its intangible dimensions enriching the experience offer with a further field: biodiversity and nature stewardship. We propose wine tourism may be used to educate consumers about the need to protect nature, ecosystem and biodiversity of those places where wine is produced and the global sustainability benefits that may be derived from that protection. We created a wine tourism offer package for a biodiversity trail set in a 70-hectare vineyard in Douro, a UNESCO world heritage site. In this work, we describe how scientific information was used to create the trail elements and educational information, to engage consumers as nature conservancy stewards and advocates.

Mountain Graticules: Bridging Latitude, Longitude, Altitude, and Historicity to Biocultural Heritage

The interdependence of biological and cultural diversity is exemplified by the new conservation paradigm of biocultural heritage. We seek to clarify obsolescent notions of nature, whereby cultural construction and identity markers of mountain communities need to reflect localized, situated, and nuanced understanding about mountainscapes as they are developed, maintained, managed, and contested in spatiality and historicity. Using the nexus of socioecological theory, we question whether a convergent approach could bridge montological knowledge systems of either different equatorial and temperate latitudes, western and eastern longitudes, hills and snow-capped mountain altitudes, or hegemonic and indigenous historicity. Using extensive literature research, intensive reflection, field observation, and critical discourse analysis, we grapple with the Nagoya Protocol of the Convention of Biological Diversity (COP 10, 2010) to elucidate the benefit sharing and linkages of biocultural diversity in tropical and temperate mountain frameworks. The result is a trend of consilience for effective conservation of mountain socioecological systems that reaffirms the transdisciplinary transgression of local knowledge and scientific input to implement the effective strategy of biocultural heritage conservation after the UN Decade of Biological Diversity. By emphasizing regeneration of derelict mountain landscapes, invigorated by empowered local communities, promoted by the Aspen Declaration, the UN Decade of Ecological Restoration, and the UN International Year of Mountain Sustainable Development, montological work on sustainable, regenerative development for 2030 can be expected.

Phylogeny and phylogeography of chelonians from sub-Saharan Africa—A review of current knowledge in tribute to Margaretha D. Hofmeyr

Species-level phylogeny and especially phylogeography of African chelonians is a comparatively under-studied field of research. We review the current knowledge of phylogeny and phylogeography, highlight congruence of spatial phylogeographic patterns amongst chelonians and other taxa and suggest future research directions to address gaps in knowledge. Our review shows that phylogeographic and phylogenetic investigations have led to unexpected findings. For example, forPelomedusa, a putatively wide-ranging monotypic terrapin genus, cryptic diversity was revealed, with more than ten species being uncovered. The formerly recognized tortoise genusHomopussensu lato was found to be paraphyletic with respect toChersina. To resolve this situation,Homopuswas restricted to the four-toed speciesH. areolatusandH. femoralisand the genusChersobiuswas resurrected for the five-toed speciesC. boulengeri,C. signatus, andC. solus. Three previously recognized taxa were shown to be invalid, viz. the putatively extinct terrapin speciesPelusios seychellensisand the tortoise subspeciesChersobius signatus caferandStigmochelys pardalis babcocki. Together with taxonomy, the knowledge of phylogeographic structuring sets a solid foundation for conservation measures and allows the identification of Management and Conservation Units. However, the current legislation, in particular the enforcement of the Nagoya Protocol under the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), has largely halted research on widely distributed taxa and turned the well-intended concept of Access and Benefit Sharing into a major impediment for conservation and research. The current situation leads for many species to a continued usage of outdated and incorrect taxonomic classifications resulting in an error cascade of conservation decisions. This is counterproductive to the aims of the CBD, that is, the protection of biodiversity. Sequencing historical DNA from museum specimens using aDNA approaches could be a short-term approach to mitigate, but not solve, this impediment.

Convention on Biological Diversity Post 2020 Target: A Critical Analyses of the Threat Posed by 30 X 30 Target, Devoid of a Human Rights Approach Towards Conservation to Land Rights in Developing Countries: Case Study Cameroon

In a bid to protect the country’s biodiversity, the government of Cameroon became party to the Convention of Biological Diversity. However, the conventions recent post 2020 and its 30 by 30 target which is aimed at designating 30% of earth’s land and Oceans has caused a lot of controversy amongst human rights advocates because of the threat it poses to indigenous land rights and has been welcomed by conservationist because of the potential it has towards the protection of biodiversity. This study was conducted to address the threat posed by the Convention on Biological Diversity and its 30 by 30 target to land rights of indigenous and traditional communities in Cameroon. The study employs a qualitative data analysis to arrive at the findings. Implementing the Convention of Biological Diversity post 2020 and its 30 by 30 target will further increase the land rights of indigenous communities in a country that already has a history of violating the land rights of indigenous communities. In order to ensure that the implementation of the Convention on biological diversity post 2020 and it’s 30 by 30 targets don’t violate the land rights of indigenous and traditional communities in Cameroon, the state must adopt a human rights-based approach towards conservation and also ensure that indigenous communities are not left out in the decision-making process in decisions that affects them directly.

Георізноманіття: виміри, конотації, асоціації

The paper aims to outline the main characteristics of the term ‘geological diversity’ in its three most clear and interrelated aspects: legal, worldview, and natural historic. The legal aspect of geodiversity now seems to be the most clearly comprehended and the most efficient in regard to its primary tasks. The experience of regulation in the international law of various objects of geodiversity is considered in relation to the concept of world her-itage. Based on the convention of biological diversity, which is also part of world heritage, we attempt by anal-ogy to compare biodiversity and geodiversity as an object of legal regulation. The system of Kant’s philosophy is analysed as a worldview basis, which can be used to clarify the meaning of the term ‘geodiversity’ and which is based on the priority of the researcher’s self-reflection in theoretical or practical judgments: being ‘in-tersubjective’ it finds realization in principles of postmodernism and other worldview novelties. The natural his-toric aspects of geodiversity are considered as one of the variants of systematization of the factual materials amassed in the earth sciences, based on the needs of the related scientific, economic, and conservational activ-ities of humans in the geological space. Analysing the demands to science in general and to geology in particu-lar, we suggest that despite the importance of systematizing paradigms, the systematic unity of geology—at least at the current stage of its development—is based on the specifics of geological thinking able to fully comprehend the diversity of geological phenomena and on the basic principles of systematization of the fac-tual material neutral in regard to dominating paradigms. In this sense, geology—as a multi-level dynamic sys-tem of reflection of the results of geological studies—embodies the ‘oncoming movement’ of empirical gener-alizations of the factual material and the conceptual-mathematical models of the more adequate reflection of the diversity of geological phenomena, among which models of fractal geometry appear to be the most pro-spective.

Healing the planet: traditional spiritual beliefs and sustainable management of ecosystems in the Amazon Forest, Colombia

ABSTRACT Elders of the indigenous communities of the Colombian Amazon have sustainably managed their forest for millennia. They practise an ecotheology founded on their sacred history (Historia) narrating actions of gods that created the universe, world, and humanity. Plants, animals, and ecological niches have spiritual owners consulted before using or hunting. Humans are regarded as an integral part of the natural world. These wisepeople undertake careers following their Historia, using their wisdom to resolve problems of deforestation and effects of climate change. Worldwide, moves to fully include indigenous peoples in climate and environmental change forums and decision-making bodies are on-going. Since 1992, the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) has promoted integration of indigenous knowledge and practices in environment management (article 8j). This can be challenging due to differences in academic and local knowledge systems. Centred on my twenty years of multidisciplinary health and environmental projects with Uitoto, Muinane, Andoke and other Colombian Amazon communities, in this article I set out elements of the ecotheological systems practised by these groups. I argue for the relevance of their understanding of the relationship between sustainable ecosystem management and traditional religious practices to practical theological knowledge.

“Nature's contributions to people” and peoples' moral obligations to nature

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has become influential in biodiversity conservation. Its research is published widely and has been adopted by the United Nations and the Convention for Biological Diversity. This platform includes discussion about how values relate to biodiversity conservation. The IPBES emphasizes “relational values”, connecting these with living a “good life,” and “nature's contributions to people” (NCP); building upon ecosystem services (ES), which have dominated nature valuation for 15+ years. Although the IPBES acknowledges instrumental and intrinsic natural values, they purport that by adopting relational values, conservation will become more socially- and culturally- inclusive, moving beyond the “unhelpful dichotomy” between instrumental and intrinsic values. We wholeheartedly agree that conservation should become more inclusive – it should, in fact, morally include nonhuman nature. We argue that far from being half of an unhelpful dichotomy, intrinsic natural values are incontrovertible elements of any honest effort to sustain Earth's biodiversity. We find NCP to be mainly anthropocentric, and relational values to be largely instrumental. The “good life” they support is a good life for humans, and not for nonhuman beings or collectives. While passingly acknowledging intrinsic natural values, the current IPBES platform gives little attention to these, and to corresponding ecocentric worldviews. In this paper we demonstrate the important practical implications of operationalizing intrinsic values for conservation, such as ecological justice, i.e., “peoples' obligations to nature”. We urge the IPBES platform, in their future values work, to become much more inclusive of intrinsic values and ecocentrism.

A call to scale up biodiversity monitoring from idiosyncratic, small-scale programmes to coordinated, comprehensive and continuous monitoring across large scales

ABSTRACT Conservation managers cannot manage what they don’t know about, yet our existing biodiversity monitoring is idiosyncratic and small in scale. One of Australia’s commitments to the Convention for Biological Diversity in 2015 was the creation of a national biodiversity monitoring programme. This has not yet occurred despite the urgent need to monitor common and threatened species, as highlighted by the challenges of determining the biodiversity impacts of the Black Summer fires of 2019/20. In light of improvements to automation, miniaturisation and powering devices, the world urgently needs to scale-up biodiversity monitoring to become coordinated, comprehensive and continuous across large scales. We propose the BIOMON project that could achieve this where individual sensor nodes use machine learning models to identify biodiversity via sound or photos onboard. This could be coupled with abiotic data on temperature and humidity, plus factors such as bushfire smoke. Nodes would be set within networks that transmit the results back to a central cloud repository where robust analyses are conducted and provided free to the public (along with the raw data). Network arrays could be set up across entire continents to measure the change in biodiversity. No one has achieved this yet, and significant challenges remain associated with training the algorithms, low power cellular network coverage, sensor power versus memory trade-offs, and sensor network placement. Much work is still needed to achieve these goals; however we are living in the 21st Century and such lofty goals cannot be achieved unless we start working towards them.

AN APPRAISAL OF THE BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY ACT, 2002 AND RULES, 2004 – STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

Aim: To create basic understanding of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 and Rules 2004, along with their strengths, weaknesses, complexities, incongruities and provide some suggestions in them. Background: Biodiversity is the 'variety, variability, between genes, species and ecosystems'. It is very important for the survival of the human beings because it has direct consumptive value in food, medicine, agriculture, industry. Being one of the world's 'mega diversity' countries India, in order to ensure compliance with the Convention of Biological Diversity, 1992, enacted Biological Diversity Act in 2002 and the Biological Diversity Rules in April 2004. They are considered necessary for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and regulate the access to biological resources of the country with the purpose of ensuring equitable share in benefits arising out of the uses of bioresources and associated knowledge to prevent the biopiracy. Review results: Though the objectives of the act are noble it has created confusions amongst the most biologists, researchers, herbal industry, raw drug suppliers and start up entrepreneurs. Along with certain strengths, there are some drawbacks like inadequate access to local communities, non-inclusion of genetic resources and complexities in access benefit sharing and equitable benefit sharing etc. Conclusion: Though the Act and Rules have some salient features there are some drawbacks and weaknesses which need to be rectified. Incorporation of the suggestions mentioned in this article can help in successfully dealing with the loopholes in the Biodiversity Act and Rules. However, till the next amendments in the legislation it is absolutely necessary for everybody in the fields related with the use of biological resources and traditional knowledge related to them to be apprised of the act.

International megabenthic long-term monitoring of a changing arctic ecosystem: Baseline results

The sustainable development and environmental protection of the Arctic ecosystem is on the agenda globally. The Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals call for conserving at least 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas globally. Management tools to achieve this goal include marine protected areas (MPAs) and “other effective area-based conservation measures” (OECMs) of structural megabenthic organisms (e.g. corals, sea pens, sponges, anemones, etc.). But large areas of the ocean are lacking information about seabed communities. Here we show that this data gap can potentially be filled by collecting data on megabenthic organisms that are “bycatch” (not the target species) on government research vessels monitoring commercial fish and shellfish. For this paper, several Arctic and sub-arctic nations contributed megabenthos data from a total of 12.569 fish assessment trawls and associated bottom water temperature data. The latter outline areas of warm sub-Arctic inflow versus colder Arctic waters, which we align with temperature affinities of community. We also found that maximum levels of shared taxa were higher between Atlantic and Eurasian Arctic Seas than with Pacific Arctic Seas. Areas of high standardized species richness generally, but not everywhere, coincided with areas of high standardized biomass and/or high current velocity and in transition zones between water masses. We did not find that standardized taxon richness declined with latitude (from 60 to 81°N) as has been previously hypothesized. High biomass was generally associated with Arctic outflow shelves and/ or (within-region) colder water masses. We identify areas with high proportions of sessile and upright taxa that may be susceptible to damage by bottom trawl gear, taxa with calcareous skeletons that may be susceptible to ocean acidification, and 'cold-water' taxa that may be most vulnerable to ocean warming. Our results demonstrate the feasibility and value of international collaboration and cooperation in understanding large-scale patterns of Arctic megabenthic communities and providing scientific advice for management of human activities in the global Arctic ecosystem.

How much of the Caatinga is legally protected? An analysis of temporal and geographical coverage of protected areas in the Brazilian semiarid region

Tropical dry forests are among the most threatened vegetation types in the world, exposed to even higher deforestation rates than rainforests. The largest tropical dry forest is the Caatinga, in the semiarid Northeast region of Brazil. Home to many endemic species and genera, the Caatinga has lost half of its original vegetation cover and become highly fragmented. Furthermore, the Caatinga is little protected by conservation units and subject to multiple human pressures. Brazil committed to the Convention of Biological Diversity’s Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011 -2020, including the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, requiring protection of 17 % of terrestrial habitats. Using GIS, we quantified the total area of Caatinga encompassed by fully protected and sustainable use reserves. We found that less than 8 % of the Caatinga is legally protected under Brazil’s national nature reserve legislation (SNUC law), and only 1.3 % is in reserves with full legal protection. We show that the geographical distribution of reserves is biased, leaving some regions of the Caatinga with very little protection. We conclude that Brazil has not met international conservation commitments with respect to the Caatinga and, despite a recent expansion of the protected area network, only small and unrepresentative portions of the Caatinga are effectively safeguarded.

Distribution, Temporal Change, and Conservation Status of Tropical Seagrass Beds in Southeast Asia: 2000–2020

Although Southeast Asia is a hotspot of global seagrass diversity, there are considerable information gaps in the distribution of seagrass beds. Broad-scale seagrass distribution has not been updated in the global seagrass database by UNEP-WCMC since 2000, although studies on seagrasses have been undertaken intensively in each region. Here we analyze the recent distribution of tropical seagrass beds, their temporal changes, causes of decline and conservation status in Southeast Asia (plus southern mainland China, Taiwan and Ryukyu Island of Japan) using data collected after 2000. Based on the 195 literature published since 2000, we identified 1,259 point data and 1,461 polygon data showing the distribution of seagrass beds. A large discrepancy was found in the seagrass bed distribution between our updated data and the UNEP-WCMC database, mostly due to inaccurate and low resolution location information in the latter. Temporal changes in seagrass bed area analyzed for 68 sites in nine countries/regions demonstrated that more than 60% of seagrass beds declined at an average rate of 10.9% year–1, whereas 20% of beds increased at an average rate of 8.1% year–1, leading to an overall average decline of 4.7% year–1. Various types of human-induced threats were reported as causes for the decline, including coastal development, fisheries/aquaculture, and natural factors such as typhoons and tsunamis. The percentage of seagrass beds covered with existing marine protected areas (MPAs) varied greatly among countries/regions, from less than 1% in Brunei Darussalam and Singapore to 100% in southern Japan. However, the degree of conservation regulation was not sufficient even in regions with higher MPA coverage. The percentage of seagrass beds within EBSAs (Ecologically and Biologically Significant Area determined by the Convention of Biological Diversity) was higher than that within MPAs because EBSAs cover a greater area than MPAs. Therefore, designating EBSAs as legally effective MPAs can greatly improve the conservation status of seagrass beds in Southeast Asia.

Growing industrialization and poor conservation planning challenge natural resources' management in the Amazon Shelf off Brazil

The Northern Brazilian shelf is dominated by the interface between the world's largest river and the Atlantic Ocean, which results in a hypossaline/nutrient-rich offshore plume that reaches up to 2.106 km2 across the North Atlantic. The Amazonian-Orinoco Influence Zone is considered an Ecologically and Biologically Significant Area by the United Nation’s Convention of Biological Diversity, encompassing structurally complex and biologically productive ecosystems with high biodiversity. In the last decades, the growing industrialization, together with the exploitation of coastal and marine resources, intensified across the region while management of natural resources’ exploitation remained weak. Ecological knowledge is steadily accumulating, but the fragmented database challenges the development of a comprehensive environmental management agenda. Here, based on an extensive compilation of primary and secondary data, we assessed the spatial extent of the economic activities that impact biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the region (e.g., fisheries, oil and gas development, mining). The representation of biological diversity in the developing network of Coastal and Marine Protected Areas (CMPAs) was also assessed based on the distribution of benthic habitats, river plume dynamics, and the distribution of endangered, protected and commercially important species. Besides outlining the escalating conflicts and policies that hinder the sustainable use of the Amazon shelf off Brazil, our results provide an initial framework for marine spatial planning.