Biodiversity Loss

This literature review will try to review the main peer reviewed studies that are appropriate to this project. There are a large number of studies into ES published. However, since the focus of this research is on ES mapping these will not be reviewed in detail and will only be referred to as the author see appropriate.

Biodiversity loss is one of the greatest global threats to the environment and involves considerable economic and welfare losses, for example it is estimated that 3% of global GDP is lost due to biodiversity loss each year (TEEB, 2011). In 2010 that cost the European Union (EU) alone an estimated €450 billion (IMF, 2011). Because of this, the significance of sustaining natural capital and the benefits that flow from it for conservation has been growing in both the developed and the developing world since the late 1990’s; eventually leading to the influential Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) in 2005.

The MA is a combined ecosystem assessment compiled by, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) the private sector and over 1300 biological scientists, that assessed the state of the world’s ecosystems and outlined a framework for determining the connections between ecosystem services and human well-being and the drivers of change at different spatial and temporal scales. The MA measured twenty four ecosystem services finding that over the last 50 years: fifteen are in massive decline, five are in a stable state (but under threat) and only four have seen an improvement (MEA, 2005). It concludes that anthropogenic activities are having a substantial and increasing impact on the biodiversity of the Earths ecosystems, depleting both their resilience and natural capital and that this degradation of ecosystem ...

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...nd explaining the significance of ES to themselves and other stakeholders. However, the participants stressed a need for caution when using maps for the communication of data and information to stakeholders. Suggesting that some stakeholders may view map as “having an air of authority” and could be seen as strict, bureaucratic and a tool for administrative control, thus restricting their decision making opportunities (Hauck et al., 2013).

Maps can also have an educational value, in that they can simplify efforts to explain the significance of biodiversity and ES to the non-scientific community in a more user-friendly manner. This is especially true when combined with scenarios, such as (EXAMPLE). Cowling et al. (2008) highlights that the spatially explicit representation of alternative futures lets stakeholders visualise the benefits of a specific policy framework.