The UK Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, is calling for world leaders to include the impact on biodiversity in their decision making, warning that the world may be undergoing the sixth greatest extinction ever. He’s contemplating a report on the economic consequences of biodiversity loss, and a pricing of biodiversity in a similar fashion as we’ve priced carbon.

Read more in this article from The Guardian.

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, and while coordinated conservation efforts are taking place at an unprecedented level worldwide, there are still dramatic declines in species diversity taking place. Climate change threatens to accelerate this process, but it also holds some promise for more coordinated global conservation efforts.

“The time is ripe for a new vision, one that takes both biodiversity and climate change seriously and explores the crucial connections between them. The Copenhagen process is already moving in this direction, and some new global financial mechanisms are also emerging. The World Bank’s climate investment funds are designed to reduce deforestation in order to mitigate climate change. The Global Environmental Facility, an organization that provides grants to developing countries for projects related to promoting biodiversity and other environmental issues, could make a greater contribution if given more funding and more agile management. Both the UN and the World Bank have limited but valuable new financial facilities for reducing emissions from land-use change.”

Read Steven Sanderson’s essay, “Where the Wild Things Were,” in Foreign Affairs for a more thorough assessment of current conservation status.

In April 2003 more than 123 countries committed to a significant reduction in biodiversity loss by 2010 at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The goal to diminish biodiversity loss at local, national and regional levels was set forth as a goal to alleviate poverty and benefit all life on Earth. Yet, the rate of ecosystem and species loss continues to accelerate.

While the progress is grim, all is not lost. This week more than 600 biodiversity experts are meeting in Cape Town for the DIVERSITAS conference to talk about protecting the ecosystem services that underpin biodiversity. The key areas that this group will address include:

• How to demonstrate and quantify the economic costs and impacts on human welfare globally and locally due to biodiversity loss and ecosystems degradation
• How to understand, manage and conserve ecosystem services including, for example, the creation of economic incentives to prevent habitat destruction
• How to share the benefits from the use of genetic resources fairly and equitably
• How to improve research institutions and the international stewardship of biodiversity

You can read more about the work of this group in their Annual Report.

I was speaking to Willie Smits, an amazing individual that has dedicated his life to preserving the forest habit of Orangutans, and he mentioned a meeting that he organized between Jack Dangermond and Jim Edwards, the executive director of the Encyclopedia of Life. Smits talked about the pressing need for this organization to store the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, as a stumbling block to the efforts of the Encyclopedia of Life. Smits and Evans pressed the issues that they were up against,  and to Smits great delight, Jack agreed to host this information on the company’s servers for free.

Smits passionately described to me the ultimate goal of the Encyclopedia of Life to share and buildon scientific knowledge by enabling citizen scientists to be able to easily and rapidly classify the flora and faua around them. This vision fits neatly with one of Jack’s passions, so it’s not surprising to learn of his endorsement and altruistic effort. It’s not like ESRI to promote their involvement in such an effort, but I thought it fitting to publicize it as an adjunct to my piece about the company’s focus on the greater good. Look for my full interview with Smits in the coming weeks, you won’t want to miss it.

Conservation International conducted a survey with a team of international scientists in southwestern Ecuador in April. Findings from the field include as many as 12 new species new to science, including plants, amphibians, reptiles, and insects. Watch the above video for a nice summary of some of the most interesting finds.

The expedition also aimed to educate the local people about their ecosystem, and gathered data to help convince the Ecuadorian government to protect the area for such economic benefits as ecotourism. The group also instructed them on the Socio-bosque Program, which aims to benefit communities while promoting conservation. This program was launched by the Ecuadorian federal government to provide direct monetary incentives to individual landowners and indigenous communities that protect the native forest. The government aims to protect 4 million hectares and improve the lives of some of the poorest people in the country.

Researchers at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography just had a paper published in Science that shows that the lifecycle of shrimp throughout the North Atlantic closely matches the bloom of phytoplankton. The researchers used observations from remote sensing satellites to understand the large spatial and long temporal problem, with more than 10 years of data and analysis.

The study suggests that there is a very fine balance between the timing of these two marine phenomenon, and that it wouldn’t take much to disrupt this balance. The temperature at the ocean bottom can change the hatching time of shrimp by as much as four months, and phytoplankton blooms are largely dependent on sunlight and surface water temperatures. A mild increase in surface or bottom temperature could put the two out of phase, with devastating results.

The International Institute for Environment and Development released a report yesterday that explores the issue of land tenure in tropical forests as a component of the international debate on REDD (Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries). REDD has been gaining increasing attention because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change has found that deforestation accounts for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally, and a reduction in climate change won’t be achievable without reducing forest loss and degradation.

The land tenure issue is an important talking point, because forest land is often owned by the government or large corporations and locals often have little incentive to help steward the forest because they have no economic stake in the outcome. The carbon value of the land may instantly make the land more value, and without addressing tenure issues upfront, locals could be disenfranchised or might even be displaced.

“It appears evident that many countries are ill-equipped in practice to ensure that REDD schemes benefit local people. Improvements in tenure alone will not achieve this. Tackling some of the powerful players behind deforesting activities, like destructive logging, pressures for infrastructure development and conversion of forests to agribusiness, will require concerted action on an unprecedented scale in many countries.”

This report has been prepared in advance of the Copenhagen conference that is scheduled for December. At that meeting, countries will determine if REDD schemes will move forward on an international scale.

The amphibian chytrid fungus is taking a heavy toll on frogs in Central America. This fast-spreading fungus is being blamed for wiping out dozens of frog and amphibian species, with 122 amphibian species believed to have gone extinct in the last 30 years. While the fungus has been around for a long time, mounting research points to a diminishing resistance to the infection due to environmental change.

The fungus has been found in 87 countries now. Zoos and institutions have come together to form the Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project, which plans an unprecedented effort to rescue and save numerous frog species. Panama is the focus area for this effort as the fungus hasn’t yet hit this small tropical country. A recent discovery that bacteria on the frog’s skin can fight the infection has provided hope for this battle. Bathing or spraying frogs with the helpful bacteria is part of the plan.

The Amphibiaweb website contains a good deal of details and maps regarding global amphibian declines. The rate of decline is alarming throughout the world, and the fungus is just one of the threats. Water and soil quality are the primary problems, but so are climate change, predation, depleted ozone, loss of habitat, pesticide use, etc.

It’s great to see this high-profile rescue response mobilize for Panama. Here the primary threat has been identified, and with a concerted effort perhaps we can change the outcome from extinction to survival.

Researchers have discovered that more than 80 percent of the world’s largest armed conflicts between 1950 and 2000 occurred in areas deemed as biodiversity hotspots by Conservation International.  These areas of natural wealth contain more than half of the world’s plant species and more than 40 percent of vertebrates. Of the 34 such hotspots around the globe, only 11 escaped armed conflict during this 50-year period.

The correlation between the richest storehouses on Earth and conflict reveals a new relationship between nature and human exploitation, pointing for a need for even greater protection of these places for their resources and the services that they provide. The same factors that protect nature in these areas, deep forests and high mountains, also provide cover for fighters.

The research finds that lasting environmental repercussions come from conflict, but that there are a few positive environmental outcomes. The demilitarized zone between North and South Korea is a prime example of conflict benefits as this more than two mile wide corridor has become a nature preserve having been uninhabited for decades.

You can read more about this research in this AFP story, or  read the full findings in Conservation Biology.

The application of GPS, radio telemetry and other tracking and mapping devices to the movements of the natural world is leading to a new discipline that’s being termed ‘movement ecology’. Automated Radio Telemetry is a tracking system that relies on tall radio transmitters that monitor devices planted on individuals, track unique radio signatures, and triangulate the position to monitor those individuals around the clock. The transmitters are now tiny and light, allowing scientists to tag bugs and even plant seeds. This practice of tracking and analyzing the movements and interaction of natural systems has been ongoing for years, but the new tools and systems to analyze the data, is spurring a new research that is yielding surprising results and leading to the creation of a whole new scientific discipline.

The December 2008 edition of the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), contains a 76-page special feature on movement ecology, edited by Prof. Ran Nathan, who heads the Movement Ecology Laboratory in the Department of Evolution, Systematics and Ecology at the Hebrew University’s Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences.

Read an overview of this new frontier in this story in the New York Times.