Pyramids of Life: Working with nature for a sustainable future

我们这个星球的自然资源面临着不可持续的需求，有证据表明，目前的管理办法未能推动资源利用走向可持续的未来。这一失败在海洋生态系统中尤为严重，在那里，约95%的渔业被充分或过度开发。实现可持续性需要逐步改变，但这种改变只有在与消费者需求、现实世界渔业实际情况以及可持续的国家政策(如英国25年环境计划中描述的自然资本方法)保持一致的情况下才能受到影响。可持续未来的“生命金字塔”方法捕捉并帮助沟通不同物种、人类行为和海洋生态系统功能之间的复杂关系。生态金字塔代表了不同的基于大小的营养水平，大型生物的相对稀缺性受到基于较小猎物的能量流动的众所周知的比例原则的调节。人类的需求也可以用等级金字塔来表示，在较高层次的需求(例如自尊需求)能够影响行为(例如价值系统)之前，较低层次的生理需求(例如对食物的需求)必须得到满足。如果将来自这种金字塔的信息放在一起，将使利益攸关方能够了解复杂和动态的系统及其相互依存关系，有助于为适应性决策提供信息，并有助于基于现有数据集的高效和可扩展的建模工具。这可能会扭曲自然生产的金字塔的大小结构，导致当地人口崩溃。在渔获量不可避免地包括许多物种的地方，这也可能是浪费的。消费者偏好和市场力量也发挥了作用，以可能牺牲生态上更可持续的替代方案为代价，促进“盘子大小”的渔获量和知名物种。我们已经表明，更好地尊重生态金字塔的管理，以及特定规模类别的产量与该规模类别的产量成比例(以每年的碳单位)，既可以提高生产率，又可以意外地对外部挑战具有惊人的弹性。挑战在于将这种学术观察转化为现实。要做到这一点，我们需要了解消费者和渔民的行为，并确定哪里的变化在商业上可行，在生态上可持续。金字塔的概念再次发挥了作用，这一次它描述了价值观和行为。与我们的伙伴组织的共同发展确定了关键的目标物种和渔业，以及现有的数据集，在这些数据集中，有针对性的管理变化可以与人类行为和经济价值的现实以及生态可持续性保持一致。这项研究结合了社会经济学和人类行为(东安格利亚大学)、生态学和详细时空数据集(CEFAS)以及数学和海洋生态学(约克大学)方面的交叉专业知识。我们的合作伙伴Seafish和WaitRose提供了市场动态、消费者行为和渔业努力方面的详细专业知识，并与我们对长期可持续发展的承诺相匹配。这些工作将共同为海洋生态系统的价值提供多维视角，从而使未来的管理干预措施直接基于什么是可持续的。

Our planet's natural resources face unsustainable demands and there is evidence that current management approaches are failing to move resource use towards a sustainable future. This failure is particularly acute in marine ecosystems where about 95% of fisheries are fully- or over-exploited. A step-change is needed to achieve sustainability, but such change can only be affected if it aligns with consumer demand, real world fishing practicalities, and with sustainable national policies such as the Natural Capital Approach described by the UK's 25 Year Environment Plan. The 'Pyramids of Life' approach to a sustainable future captures and helps to communicate complex relationships between different species, human behaviours, and marine ecosystem functions. Ecological pyramids represent different size-based trophic levels with the relative scarcity of larger organisms being regulated by well-understood scaling principles based on energy flow from smaller prey. Human needs can also be represented in hierarchical pyramids where lower level physiological needs (e.g. need for food) must be satisfied before higher level needs (e.g. need for self-esteem) can influence behaviour (e.g. value systems). If presented together, information from such pyramids would allow stakeholders to understand complex and dynamic systems and their interdependencies, contribute to inform adaptive decision-making and lend itself to efficient and scalable modelling tools based on existing datasetsThe problem for the UK's marine resources is that fisheries management agreements typically use metrics which are based, for a given species, on the number of tonnes landed above some given minimum size. This can distort the size structure of naturally productive pyramids, causing local crashes in populations. It can also be wasteful where catches inevitably encompass many species. Consumer preference and market forces also play a role, promoting "plate-sized" catches and well-known species at the possible expense of more ecologically sustainable alternatives.We have shown that management which better respects ecological pyramids, and where harvest at a particular size class is proportional to the production at that size class (in units of carbon per year), can be both more productive and surprisingly resilient to external challenges. The challenge is to convert this academic observation into practical reality. To do this, we need to understand the behaviour of consumers, and of fishers, and to identify where change can be commercially viable as well as ecologically sustainable. Again the pyramid concept, this time describing values and behaviours, is helpful. Co-development with our partner organisations has identified key target species and fisheries, and existing datasets, where targeted changes in management can align with both the realities of human behaviour and economic value, and ecological sustainability. The research combines overlapping expertise in socio-economics and human behaviour (University of East Anglia), ecology and detailed spatio-temporal datasets (Cefas),and mathematics and marine ecology (University of York). Our partners Seafish and Waitrose bring detailed expertise in market dynamics, consumer behaviour and fishing effort, as well as matching our commitment to long-term sustainability. Together, this body of work will provide a multidimensional perspective of the value of marine ecosystems so that future management interventions are based squarely on what is sustainable.