Can biodiversity, human wellbeing and sustainable development indicators be linked?

Abstract

A mission to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity as a contribution to poverty reduction was agreed as part of the Strategic Plan for the Convention on Biological Diversity, adopted by the Conference of the Parties in 2002. As 2010 draws to a close it is clear that this target will not be met. To continue and build on momentum generated by the 2010 target, the conservation community has been discussing a potential post-2010 framework that again includes explicit reference to the link between human wellbeing and conservation, and also considers the links with human wellbeing and sustainable development. Given this agreement, we reviewed several human wellbeing and sustainable development indicators compared to existing biodiversity status and trends indicators to determine if clear correlations can be found that could be used to track progress in a new framework. We undertook this review at both the global and continental levels. The indicators for protected area and forest cover showed significant positive correlation across all continents. We found a significant negative correlation between changes in protected area (PA ) cover and tonnage of greenhouse gas emissions released (GHGe) between 1990 and 2005 for all the continents. At the global level we found no other correlation across the indicators reviewed. However, we found that correlations between the biodiversity and human wellbeing and sustainable development indicators varied across continents. As the only indicators for which global level correlations exist, we suggest that either protected area coverage or forest cover may be relevant biodiversity indicators for global analyses of biodiversity-human wellbeing or sustainable development relationships, and that the relationship between protected area cover and greenhouse gases could be one indicator for links between biodiversity and sustainable development. More research is needed to better understand factors involved in the relationships between biodiversity, human wellbeing and sustainable development, and to identify useful indicators of these linkages at global or continental level. In the meantime, the challenges presented by demonstrating these links should not delay urgently needed conservation actions.