Celebrating Biodiversity for World Environment Day

Elsevier, June 2020

World Environment Day is the most renowned day for environmental action. Since 1974, it has been celebrated every year on June 5th, engaging governments, businesses, celebrities and citizens to focus their efforts on a pressing environmental issue. In 2020, the theme is biodiversity, a concern that is both urgent and existential. Recent events, from bushfires in Brazil, the United States and Australia, to locust infestations across East Africa – and now, a global disease pandemic – demonstrate the interdependence of humans and the webs of life in which they exist. Nature is sending us a message.

To mark World Environment Day 2020, Elsevier presents a curated collection of 62 journal articles and book chapters devoted to biodiversity and humanity’s intimate interconnection with nature.

This special issue demonstrates how nature responds to some of the most pressing challenges faced by humans today. It provides us with oxygen, purifies the water we drink, ensures fertile soil, and produces the variety of foods we require to stay healthy and resist disease. It enables medical researchers to understand human physiology; and offers substance for developing medicines. It is the foundation of most industries and livelihoods. It even helps mitigate the impact of climate change by storing carbon and regulating local rainfall. Life on earth would not be possible without nature’s services. It is our greatest common good.

But with our increasing demands, humans have pushed nature beyond its limit. In the last 50 years, the human population has doubled; the global economy has almost quadrupled and global trade has increased by about ten times. It would take 1.6 Earths to meet the demands that humans make of nature each year.

As part of our SDG Impact of COVID-19 podcast series, RELX’s Global Head of Corporate Responsibility, Dr Márcia Balisciano, spoke to Dr Sam Scheiner, Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Biodiversity. As discussed during this episode, the emergence of COVID-19 has underscored the fact that, when we destroy biodiversity, we destroy the system that supports human life. By upsetting the delicate balance of nature, we have created ideal conditions for pathogens – including coronaviruses – to spread.

If we don’t take care of nature, we can’t take care of ourselves. It's time to work together #ForNature.

Elsevier, One Earth, Volume 1, 25 October 2019
Economic development projects are increasingly applying the mitigation hierarchy to achieve No Net Loss, or even a Net Gain, of biodiversity. Because people value biodiversity and ecosystem services, this can affect the well-being of local people; however, these types of social impacts from development receive limited consideration. We present ethical, practical, and regulatory reasons why development projects applying the mitigation hierarchy should consider related social impacts.
Elsevier, One Earth, Volume 2, 24 January 2020
The unprecedented global heatwave of 2014–2017 was a defining event for many ecosystems. Widespread degradation caused by coral bleaching, for example, highlighted the vulnerability of hundreds of millions of people dependent on reefs for their livelihoods, well-being, and food security. Scientists and policy makers are now reassessing long-held assumptions about coping with anthropogenic climate change, particularly the assumption that strong local institutions can maintain ecological and social resilience through ecosystem-based management, adaptation, and restoration.
Elsevier, One Earth, Volume 2, 24 January 2020
Biodiversity is in rapid decline, largely driven by habitat loss and degradation. Protected area establishment and management are widely used to maintain habitats and species in perpetuity. Protected area extent has increased rapidly in recent years with area-based targets set within international conservation agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity's Aichi Target 11.
Elsevier, One Earth, Volume 2, 21 February 2020
Despite global policy commitments to preserve Earth's marine biodiversity, many species are in a state of decline. Using data on 22,885 marine species, we identify 8.5 million km2 of priority areas that complement existing areas of conservation and biodiversity importance. New conservation priorities are found in over half (56%) of all coastal nations, including key priority regions in the northwest Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean.
Elsevier, One Earth, Volume 2, 24 April 2020
Ocean health is critical for human well-being but is threatened by multiple stressors. Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed to protect 10% of their waters by 2020. The scientific evidence supporting the use of marine protected areas (MPAs) to conserve biodiversity stems primarily from knowledge on fully protected areas, but most of what is being established is partially protected. Here, we assess the protection levels of the 1,062 Mediterranean MPAs.
Elsevier, One Earth, Volume 2, 21 February 2020
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were designed to address interactions between the economy, society, and the biosphere. However, indicators used for assessing progress toward the goals do not account for these interactions. To understand the potential implications of this compartmentalized assessment framework, we explore progress evaluations toward SDG 14 (Life below Water) and intersecting social goals presented in submissions to the UN High-Level Political Forum.
Elsevier, One Earth, Volume 2, 22 May 2020
Most of the terrestrial world is experiencing high rates of land conversion despite growth of the global protected area (PA) network. There is a need to assess whether the current global protection targets are achievable across all major ecosystem types and to identify those that need urgent protection. Using recent rates of habitat conversion and protection and the latest terrestrial ecoregion map, we show that if the same approach to PA establishment that has been undertaken over the past three decades continues, 558 of 748 ecoregions (ca.
Elsevier, Biological Conservation, Volume 245, May 2020
If moral concern for nonhuman nature underpins conservation, it is essential to understand how individuals populate their “moral communities,” a core concept from environmental ethics, with various elements of biodiversity. Using data from an online survey of the United States public (N = 1331), we investigated the extent to which respondents' moral communities align with four worldviews discussed in the environmental ethics literature: anthropocentrism, zoocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. Each worldview provides a vision for how the moral community should be constituted.
Elsevier, Biological Conservation, Volume 245, May 2020
Refuges and refugia are important to conservation management because of their potential to protect species from difficult-to-manage threats such as changing climate, extreme events (e.g., drought, fire) and biotic threats (e.g., disease, invasive species). To provide conservation managers with an evidence-based approach to identifying refuges and refugia, we ask: which places have been observed to function as refuges/refugia, with results reported in the scientific literature? We systematically reviewed the past 20 years of research into refuges/refugia.
Elsevier, Biological Conservation, Volume 246, June 2020
The destruction of natural habitats is causing loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Although a “zero deforestation” is targeted, agriculture expansion caused by increasing human population and per capita consumption might boost the destruction of natural habitats in the coming decades. Here, we estimated the current and future extinction crisis in terrestrial ecoregions caused by habitat destruction and related this pattern with the current conservation efforts.

Pages