Linking global biodiversity goals to local conservation efforts: applications for marine spatial planning

海洋环境在全球范围内受到威胁，许多海洋生态系统，包括珊瑚礁、海草、红树林和深海海底生态系统，都受到明显的退化影响。这些环境面临的主要威胁与人为活动有关，全球不到14%的海洋没有受到人类的直接影响。反过来，这种退化造成了生态系统面积的净损失，影响了它们提供的生态系统服务。随着人口的增长，对海洋的依赖也随之增加，决策者和从业者需要改进保护工具，以减少海洋物种灭绝的风险。物种威胁缓解和恢复（STAR）指标使用物种灭绝风险和相关威胁的数据来评估缓解威胁和恢复栖息地的影响。这一工具能够确定影响物种的威胁的空间范围，并指出在特定地区采取保护行动可能对灭绝风险产生的潜在改善。然而，还没有评估STAR度量标准如何在诸如海洋空间规划等实际应用中使用，以及它在不同尺度上对保护行动的适用性。当考虑到从业者和决策者可用的有限资源时，量化特定区域对实现全球生物多样性目标的贡献的能力是无价的。然而，全球方法通常持有“无处不在的观点”，因此使用的数据粗糙，不能准确地代表当地情况。在考虑海洋物种在空间规划中的价值时，本地数据至关重要，因为一个物种的生态、社会和经济价值会因地区而异。另一方面，地方层面的保护行动往往与更广泛的目标和目标脱节，这意味着行动没有被考虑在内。此外，随着人类对海洋生态系统的依赖日益增加，在规划保护行动时促进社会生态复原力变得越来越重要，以应对气候变化。海洋空间规划是一种常用的保护工具，用于平衡人类对海洋环境的利用与生态保护，但将气候适应能力纳入规划的做法并不广泛。考虑到恢复以减少物种灭绝风险的必要性，迫切需要确定在预期环境变化下如何将社会生态弹性纳入空间规划，以减轻威胁和恢复工作。然而，如果没有考虑到更广泛的环境景观，特别是在考虑气候变化和渔业等人为压力因素时，小规模的保护工作，包括恢复，可能会产生有限的影响，因为它们的影响往往不能受到空间限制。本项目旨在通过四个研究问题来研究海洋空间规划中地方优先排序过程与全球政策目标之间的关系：1)地方优先排序过程与全球政策目标之间的关系是什么？2)生态系统恢复工作如何有助于实现全球生物多样性目标？3)如何将社会生态弹性纳入海洋生态系统管理和恢复的空间规划？4)本地的管理工作对整体的保育有何贡献？确定规模如何影响保护优先事项的能力将有助于将全球目标和指标与地方行动联系起来。

Marine environments are at threat globally with degradation effects evident across numerous marine ecosystems, including coral reefs, seagrasses, mangroves and deep-sea floor ecosystems. The main threats to these environments are anthropogenically related, with under 14% of oceans globally being free from direct human impacts. In turn, this degradation has created a net loss of ecosystem area, impacting the ecosystem services that they provide. With the human population growing, and consequently an increased dependence on the ocean, there is a requirement for improved conservation tools for decision makers and practitioners in order to reduce extinction risk to marine species. A species threat abatement and restoration (STAR) metric uses data on species extinction risks, and associated threats, to assess the impact of abating threats and restoring habitats. Such a tool enables the spatial extents of threats that impact species to be identified and indicates the potential improvement to extinction risk that conservation actions in a particular area can have. However, how the STAR metric can be used in real world applications such as marine spatial planning, and its applicability to conservation action in varying scales, has not yet been assessed. The ability to quantify the contribution of a specified area towards meeting global biodiversity goals is invaluable when considering the limited resources available to practitioners and decision makers. However, global approaches often hold a 'view from everywhere' and therefore utilise data with a coarseness that cannot accurately represent local conditions. When considering the value of marine species in spatial planning, localised data is crucial as the ecological, social and economic value of a species will vary considerably from one area to another. On the other hand, conservation actions on a local level are often disconnected from the wider targets and goals, meaning that actions are not being accounted for. Further to this, as human dependence on marine ecosystems grows, promoting social-ecological resilience when planning conservation actions is becoming increasingly important in the face of climate change. Marine spatial planning is a common conservation tool used to balance human uses of marine environments with ecological protection, however incorporating climate resilience into planning is not widely practiced. Considering the need for restoration to reduce species extinction risk, there is an urgency to determine how social-ecological resilience can be incorporated into spatial planning for threat abatement and restoration efforts under expected environmental change. However, conservation efforts, including restoration, implemented over small scales may have limited impact if they fail to consider the wider environmental landscape, especially when considering anthropogenic stressors such as climate change and fisheries, who's impacts often cannot be spatially constrained. This project aims to investigate the relationship between local prioritisation processes and global policy goals in marine spatial planning through four research questions: 1) what is the relationship between local prioritisation processes and global policy goals? 2) how can ecosystem restoration efforts contribute to global biodiversity targets? 3) how can socio-ecological resilience be incorporated into marine spatial planning for ecosystem management and restoration? 4) how do localised management efforts contribute to the bigger conservation picture? The ability to determine how scale impacts conservation priorities will help to link global goals and targets with localised actions.