Ana L. Porzecanski

A systemic view of biodiversity and its conservation: Processes, interrelationships, and human culture

Historically, views and measurements of biodiversity have had a narrow focus, for instance, characterizing the attributes of observable patterns but affording less attention to processes. Here, we explore the question: how does a systems thinking view - one where the world is seen as elements and processes that connect and interact in dynamic ways to form a whole - affect the way we understand biodiversity and practice conservation? We answer this question by illustrating the systemic properties of biodiversity at multiple levels, and show that biodiversity is a collection of dynamic systems linking seemingly disparate biological and cultural components and requiring an understanding of the system as a whole. We conclude that systems thinking calls traditional views of species, ecosystem function, and human relationships with the rest of biodiversity into question. Finally, we suggest some of the ways in which this view can impact the science and practice of conservation, particularly through affecting our conservation targets and strategies.

Availability of formal academic programs in conservation biology in Latin America.

Latin America (in our analysis, Brazil and the Spanish-speaking countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico) holds a disproportionate fraction of the world’s biodiversity (Myers et al. 2000; Olson & Dinerstein 2002; Lamoreux et al. 2006). The region depends heavily on natural resource exploitation and has high rates of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss (WRI 2003; Hassan et al. 2005). Environmental challenges in Latin America are further complicated by a lack of conservation capacity-building opportunities that encompass many levels, audiences, and contexts (Bonine et al. 2003; Rodŕıguez et al. 2005, 2006; Chek et al. 2007). Despite long-standing educational initiatives in several Latin American countries, significant effort would be required to match the supply of formal conservation education in a country like the United States (Rodŕıguez et al. 2005). Here we present an assessment of formal programs in conservation biology, including graduate and undergraduate degree programs focused primarily on conservation and conservationrelated classes in broader biology or environmental sciences curricula. Our goals were twofold. First, we sought to provide a current database

Biocultural approaches to well-being and sustainability indicators across scales

Monitoring and evaluation are central to ensuring that innovative, multi-scale, and interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability are effective. The development of relevant indicators for local sustainable management outcomes, and the ability to link these to broader national and international policy targets, are key challenges for resource managers, policymakers, and scientists. Sets of indicators that capture both ecological and social-cultural factors, and the feedbacks between them, can underpin cross-scale linkages that help bridge local and global scale initiatives to increase resilience of both humans and ecosystems. Here we argue that biocultural approaches, in combination with methods for synthesizing across evidence from multiple sources, are critical to developing metrics that facilitate linkages across scales and dimensions. Biocultural approaches explicitly start with and build on local cultural perspectives — encompassing values, knowledges, and needs — and recognize feedbacks between ecosystems and human well-being. Adoption of these approaches can encourage exchange between local and global actors, and facilitate identification of crucial problems and solutions that are missing from many regional and international framings of sustainability. Resource managers, scientists, and policymakers need to be thoughtful about not only what kinds of indicators are measured, but also how indicators are designed, implemented, measured, and ultimately combined to evaluate resource use and well-being. We conclude by providing suggestions for translating between local and global indicator efforts.Biocultural approaches combining local values, knowledge, and needs with global ecological factors provide a fruitful indicator framework for assessing local and global well-being and sustainability, and help bridge the divide between them.