Gross domestic product (GDP) summarizes a vast amount of economic information in a single monetary metric that is widely used by decision makers around the world. However, GDP fails to capture fully the contributions of nature to economic activity and human well-being. To address this critical omission, we develop a measure of gross ecosystem product (GEP) that summarizes the value of ecosystem services in a single monetary metric. We illustrate the measurement of GEP through an application to the Chinese province of Qinghai, showing that the approach is tractable using available data. Known as the “water tower of Asia,” Qinghai is the source of the Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow Rivers, and indeed, we find that water-related ecosystem services make up nearly two-thirds of the value of GEP for Qinghai. Importantly most of these benefits accrue downstream. In Qinghai, GEP was greater than GDP in 2000 and three-fourths as large as GDP in 2015 as its market economy grew. Large-scale investment in restoration resulted in improvements in the flows of ecosystem services measured in GEP (127.5%) over this period. Going forward, China is using GEP in decision making in multiple ways, as part of a transformation to inclusive, green growth. This includes investing in conservation of ecosystem assets to secure provision of ecosystem services through transregional compensation payments.
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Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of this dynamic; humanity has become the major force in shaping the future of the Earth system as a whole; and the scale and pace of the human dimension have caused climate change, rapid loss of biodiversity, growing inequalities, and loss of resilience to deal with uncertainty and surprise. Taken together, human actions are challenging the biosphere foundation for a prosperous development of civilizations. The Anthropocene reality—of rising system-wide turbulence—calls for transformative change towards sustainable futures. Emerging technologies, social innovations, broader shifts in cultural repertoires, as well as a diverse portfolio of active stewardship of human actions in support of a resilient biosphere are highlighted as essential parts of such transformations.more » « less
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Abstract Aim Biomes, biogeographical realms and ecoregions have become central concepts of biotic organization and biodiversity research. Recent data‐intensive analysis has shown that, while ecoregions do delineate biotic communities, how distinct they are from one another varies considerably across regions and taxa. Given their central importance to global models of the earth system and to the development of conservation plans, it is key to understand in what regions, and for which taxa, ecoregion classification schemes best describe the underlying variability in biological communities.
Location Global.
Taxa Plants, animals, fungi.
Methods In this paper, we integrate ecoregion maps with data on spatially continuous changes in environmental conditions, biodiversity and species traits to quantify the descriptive power of ecoregions around the globe. Capitalizing on the troves of newly available global biodiversity data, we model the abiotic and biotic factors that describe how distinct ecoregions are from one another.
Results From an abiotic perspective, we report compelling evidence that, first, ecoregions are more distinct in tropical zones with higher temperatures, less temperature seasonality and greater rainfall seasonality. Second, we also find that ecoregions are more distinct in regions with steeper slopes. From a biotic perspective, we find that ecoregions tend to be more distinct for reptiles and amphibians than they are for mammals or birds. Likewise, ecoregions tend to be more distinct for smaller‐bodied species and, to a lesser extent, species at lower trophic levels.
Main conclusions While ecoregion‐based conservation planning can provide a crucial tool for developing holistic conservation interventions, we show here that the ability to capture and describe communities is not uniform across regions or taxa. In particular, ecoregions tend to best describe communities of small‐bodied species, less vagile and tropical taxa that are typically underrepresented in the scientific literature. While ecoregion classification schemes will continue to provide invaluable conservation guidance, we must think critically about when an ecoregional approach is best suited to informing management.
