Natalie C. Ban

A social–ecological approach to conservation planning: embedding social considerations

Many conservation plans remain unimplemented, in part because of insufficient consideration of the social processes that influence conservation decisions. Complementing social considerations with an integrated understanding of the ecology of a region can result in a more complete conservation approach. We suggest that linking conservation planning to a social–ecological systems (SES) framework can lead to a more thorough understanding of human–environment interactions and more effective integration of social considerations. By characterizing SES as a set of subsystems, and their interactions with each other and with external factors, the SES framework can improve our understanding of the linkages between social and ecological influences on the environment. Using this framework can help to identify socially and ecologically focused conservation actions that will benefit ecosystems and human communities, and assist in the development of more consistent evidence for evaluating conservation actions by comparing conservation case studies.

Cultivated plant species diversity in home gardens of an Amazonian peasant village in Northeastern Peru

Research on agrobiodiversity points to the importance of home gardens in situ conservation, yet few studies to date explicate the origins and dynamics of plant species diversity. In this paper, we examine inter-household variations in cultivated plant species diversity among house gardens in a traditional peasant community, near Iquitos, Peru. In-depth household interviews (n = 24) and garden/field surveys reveal that home gardens are clearly the site of highest plant diversity in farmers’ field portfolios, and that substantial differences exist in garden composition, plant diversity, and the sources of garden planting material across households. Statistical analyses indicate that home garden diversity is related strongly to specific garden characteristics, household socioeconomic features, and access to planting material including seeds, cuttings, and suckers. The role and implications of differential access to planting material in the development and maintenance of crop species diversity is signaled as an important theme for future study in economic botany.

Comparing and Integrating Community‐Based and Science‐Based Approaches to Prioritizing Marine Areas for Protection

We compared and integrated marine protected areas proposed through community and scientific assessments in 2 regions of British Columbia, Canada. The community priorities were identified during individual and group interviews with knowledgeable resource users. The scientific priorities were developed with abiotic and biotic data in Marxan, a decision-support tool. The resulting maps of community-based and science-based priorities were very similar for the inshore areas, which lent credibility to both approaches. The resource users thought the science-based maps were fairly good at highlighting areas important for conservation, but preferred the scenarios that integrated the 2 maps to either constituent map. Incorporating spatial variation in human impacts on the marine areas and commercial fishing, which are both costs of protection, into our Marxan analyses led to scenarios that were different from either constituent map. Our results show the value of integrating community-based and science-based approaches in conservation planning to achieve community acceptance and conservation utility. They also reveal that peoples assessments on the basis of their traditional ecological knowledge may serve as a reasonable proxy for scientific approaches in selecting areas of ecological value.

Understanding protected area resilience: a multi‐scale, social‐ecological approach

Protected areas (PAs) remain central to the conservation of biodiversity. Classical PAs were conceived as areas that would be set aside to maintain a natural state with minimal human influence. However, global environmental change and growing cross-scale anthropogenic influences mean that PAs can no longer be thought of as ecological islands that function independently of the broader social-ecological system in which they are located. For PAs to be resilient (and to contribute to broader social-ecological resilience), they must be able to adapt to changing social and ecological conditions over time in a way that supports the long-term persistence of populations, communities, and ecosystems of conservation concern. We extend Ostroms social-ecological systems framework to consider the long-term persistence of PAs, as a form of land use embedded in social-ecological systems, with important cross-scale feedbacks. Most notably, we highlight the cross-scale influences and feedbacks on PAs that exist from the local to the global scale, contextualizing PAs within multi-scale social-ecological functional landscapes. Such functional landscapes are integral to understand and manage individual PAs for long-term sustainability. We illustrate our conceptual contribution with three case studies that highlight cross-scale feedbacks and social-ecological interactions in the functioning of PAs and in relation to regional resilience. Our analysis suggests that while ecological, economic, and social processes are often directly relevant to PAs at finer scales, at broader scales, the dominant processes that shape and alter PA resilience are primarily social and economic.

Prioritizing land and sea conservation investments to protect coral reefs.

Background Coral reefs have exceptional biodiversity, support the livelihoods of millions of people, and are threatened by multiple human activities on land (e.g. farming) and in the sea (e.g. overfishing). Most conservation efforts occur at local scales and, when effective, can increase the resilience of coral reefs to global threats such as climate change (e.g. warming water and ocean acidification). Limited resources for conservation require that we efficiently prioritize where and how to best sustain coral reef ecosystems. Methodology/Principal Findings Here we develop the first prioritization approach that can guide regional-scale conservation investments in land- and sea-based conservation actions that cost-effectively mitigate threats to coral reefs, and apply it to the Coral Triangle, an area of significant global attention and funding. Using information on threats to marine ecosystems, effectiveness of management actions at abating threats, and the management and opportunity costs of actions, we calculate the rate of return on investment in two conservation actions in sixteen ecoregions. We discover that marine conservation almost always trumps terrestrial conservation within any ecoregion, but terrestrial conservation in one ecoregion can be a better investment than marine conservation in another. We show how these results could be used to allocate a limited budget for conservation and compare them to priorities based on individual criteria. Conclusions/Significance Previous prioritization approaches do not consider both land and sea-based threats or the socioeconomic costs of conserving coral reefs. A simple and transparent approach like ours is essential to support effective coral reef conservation decisions in a large and diverse region like the Coral Triangle, but can be applied at any scale and to other marine ecosystems.

A novel approach to model exposure of coastal-marine ecosystems to riverine flood plumes based on remote sensing techniques

Increased loads of land-based pollutants are a major threat to coastal-marine ecosystems. Identifying the affected marine areas and the scale of influence on ecosystems is critical to assess the impacts of degraded water quality and to inform planning for catchment management and marine conservation. Studies using remotely-sensed data have contributed to our understanding of the occurrence and influence of river plumes, and to our ability to assess exposure of marine ecosystems to land-based pollutants. However, refinement of plume modeling techniques is required to improve risk assessments. We developed a novel, complementary, approach to model exposure of coastal-marine ecosystems to land-based pollutants. We used supervised classification of MODIS-Aqua true-color satellite imagery to map the extent of plumes and to qualitatively assess the dispersal of pollutants in plumes. We used the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), the worlds largest coral reef system, to test our approach. We combined frequency of plume occurrence with spatially distributed loads (based on a cost-distance function) to create maps of exposure to suspended sediment and dissolved inorganic nitrogen. We then compared annual exposure maps (2007-2011) to assess inter-annual variability in the exposure of coral reefs and seagrass beds to these pollutants. We found this method useful to map plumes and qualitatively assess exposure to land-based pollutants. We observed inter-annual variation in exposure of ecosystems to pollutants in the GBR, stressing the need to incorporate a temporal component into plume exposure/risk models. Our study contributes to our understanding of plume spatial-temporal dynamics of the GBR and offers a method that can also be applied to monitor exposure of coastal-marine ecosystems to plumes and explore their ecological influences.

Communities and change in the anthropocene: understanding social-ecological vulnerability and planning adaptations to multiple interacting exposures

Abstract The majority of vulnerability and adaptation scholarship, policies and programs focus exclusively on climate change or global environmental change. Yet, individuals, communities and sectors experience a broad array of multi-scalar and multi-temporal, social, political, economic and environmental changes to which they are vulnerable and must adapt. While extensive theoretical—and increasingly empirical—work suggests the need to explore multiple exposures, a clear conceptual framework which would facilitate analysis of vulnerability and adaptation to multiple interacting socioeconomic and biophysical changes is lacking. This review and synthesis paper aims to fill this gap through presenting a conceptual framework for integrating multiple exposures into vulnerability analysis and adaptation planning. To support applications of the framework and facilitate assessments and comparative analyses of community vulnerability, we develop a comprehensive typology of drivers and exposures experienced by coastal communities. Our results reveal essential elements of a pragmatic approach for local-scale vulnerability analysis and for planning appropriate adaptations within the context of multiple interacting exposures. We also identify methodologies for characterizing exposures and impacts, exploring interactions and identifying and prioritizing responses. This review focuses on coastal communities; however, we believe the framework, typology and approach will be useful for understanding vulnerability and planning adaptation to multiple exposures in various social-ecological contexts.

HOME GARDENS IN AMAZONIAN PERU: DIVERSITY AND EXCHANGE OF PLANTING MATERIAL*

This article examines how peasant farmers build and maintain agrobiodiversity in home gardens found in two traditional peasant communities along the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon. Data were gathered through household and garden surveys as well as in‐depth interviews with garden tenders in an upland mixed agricultural village and a lowland fishing village. Substantial variations in cultivated plant diversity were encountered in gardens between and within the villages, which are found to be related to differential exchange of seeds, cuttings, suckers, and other planting material as well as to specific garden and household characteristics. Planting material flows along multiple pathways—from gift giving and purchase to inheritance and scavenging—to the gardens, reflecting a complex and often extensive network of exchange that enables the establishment and maintenance of home garden plant diversity in seemingly isolated and small communities. Further research is needed to identify broader geographical and sociocultural patterns of agrobiodiversity in Amazonia.

Incorporating Effectiveness of Community-Based Management in a National Marine Gap Analysis for Fiji

Every action in a conservation plan has a different level of effect and consequently contributes differentially to conservation. We examined how several community-based, marine, management actions differed in their contribution to national-level conservation goals in Fiji. We held a workshop with experts on local fauna and flora and local marine management actions to translate conservation goals developed by the national government into ecosystem-specific quantitative objectives and to estimate the relative effectiveness of Fijis community-based management actions in achieving these objectives. The national conservation objectives were to effectively manage 30% of the nations fringing reefs, nonfringing reefs, mangroves, and intertidal ecosystems (30% objective) and 10% of other benthic ecosystems (10% objective). The experts evaluated the contribution of the various management actions toward national objectives. Scores ranged from 0 (ineffective) to 1 (maximum effectiveness) and included the following management actions: permanent closures (i.e., all extractive use of resources prohibited indefinitely) (score of 1); conditional closures harvested once per year or less as dictated by a management plan (0.50-0.95); conditional closures harvested without predetermined frequency or duration (0.10-0.85); other management actions, such as regulations on gear and species harvested (0.15-0.50). Through 3 gap analyses, we assessed whether the conservation objectives in Fiji had been achieved. Each analysis was based on a different assumption: (1) all parts of locally managed marine areas (including closures and other management) conserve species and ecosystems effectively; (2) closures conserve species and ecosystems, whereas areas outside closures, open to varying levels of resource extraction, do not; and (3) actions that allow different levels of resource extraction vary in their ability to conserve species and ecosystems. Under assumption 1, Fijis national conservation objectives were exceeded in all marine ecosystems; under assumption 2, none of Fijis conservation objectives were met; and under assumption 3, on the basis of the scores assigned by experts, Fiji achieved the 10% but not the 30% objectives for ecosystems. Understanding the relative contribution of management actions to achieving conservation objectives is critical in the assessment of conservation achievements at the national level, where multiple management actions will be needed to achieve national conservation objectives.

Secure sustainable seafood from developing countries

Require improvements as conditions for market access Demand for sustainably certified wild-caught fish and crustaceans is increasingly shaping global seafood markets. Retailers such as Walmart in the United States, Sainsburys in the United Kingdom, and Carrefour in France, and processors such as Canadianbased High Liner Foods, have promised to source all fresh, frozen, farmed, and wild seafood from sustainable sources by 2015 (1, 2). Credible arbiters of certifications, such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), require detailed environmental and traceability standards. Although these standards have been met in many commercial fisheries throughout the developed world (3), developing country fisheries (DCFs) represent only 7% of ~220 total MSC-certified fisheries (4, 5). With the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reporting that developing countries account for ~50% of seafood entering international trade, this presents a fundamental challenge for marketers of sustainable seafood (see the photo).