Institution: | 1. School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK;2. Instituto de Pesquisas Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro, Centro Nacional de Conservação da Flora, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;3. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland
World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), University of The Philippines Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines
Institute for Marine & Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia;4. International Institute for Sustainability, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;5. Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Richmond, UK;6. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Oslo, Norway;7. IUCN, Washington, D.C., USA;8. IUCN, San José, Costa Rica;9. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Trondheim, Norway;10. WWF Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal;11. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Pretoria, South Africa
IUCN Species Survival Commission, Pretoria, South Africa;12. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;13. International Institute for Sustainability, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rio Conservation and Sustainability Science Centre, Department of Geography and the Environment, Pontifical Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
Abstract: | The successful implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity's post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will rely on effective translation of targets from global to national level and increased engagement across diverse sectors of society. Species conservation targets require policy support measures that can be applied to a diversity of taxonomic groups, that link action targets to outcome goals, and that can be applied to both global and national data sets to account for national context, which the species threat abatement and restoration (STAR) metric does. To test the flexibility of STAR, we applied the metric to vascular plants listed on national red lists of Brazil, Norway, and South Africa. The STAR metric uses data on species’ extinction risk, distributions, and threats, which we obtained from national red lists to quantify the contribution that threat abatement and habitat restoration activities could make to reducing species’ extinction risk. Across all 3 countries, the greatest opportunity for reducing plant species’ extinction risk was from abating threats from agricultural activities, which could reduce species’ extinction risk by 54% in Norway, 36% in South Africa, and 29% in Brazil. Species extinction risk could be reduced by a further 21% in South Africa by abating threats from invasive species and by 21% in Brazil by abating threats from urban expansion. Even with different approaches to red-listing among countries, the STAR metric yielded informative results that identified where the greatest conservation gains could be made for species through threat-abatement and restoration activities. Quantifiably linking local taxonomic coverage and data collection to global processes with STAR would allow national target setting to align with global targets and enable state and nonstate actors to measure and report on their potential contributions to species conservation. |