Conserving dryland biodiversity: a future vision of sustainable dryland development

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Conserving dryland biodiversity: a future vision ofsustainable dryland developmentMasumi Gudkaa, Jonathan Daviesa, Lene Poulsenb, Björn Schulte-Herbrüggenc, KathyMacKinnond, Nigel Crawhalle, William D. Henwoodf, Nigel Dudleyg & Jessica Smithc

a Global Drylands Initiative, IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), P.O. Box68200, Nairobi 00200, Kenyab Dryland Ecosystems, Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM), IUCN, Gland,Switzerlandc World Conservation Monitoring Centre, UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme),219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UKd World Commission on Protected Areas, IUCN, Gland, Switzerlande Theme on Indigenous Communities, Local Communities, Equity and Protected Areas(TILCEPA), IUCN, Gland, Switzerlandf Temperate Grasslands Conservation Initiative, WCPA–IUCN, Kilmarnock Crescent, NorthVancouver, BC, Canada V7J 2Z3g Equilibrium Research, 47 The Quays, Cumberland Road, Spike Island, Bristol, BS1 6UQ, UKPublished online: 07 Jul 2014.

To cite this article: Masumi Gudka, Jonathan Davies, Lene Poulsen, Björn Schulte-Herbrüggen, Kathy MacKinnon, NigelCrawhall, William D. Henwood, Nigel Dudley & Jessica Smith (2014) Conserving dryland biodiversity: a future vision ofsustainable dryland development, Biodiversity, 15:2-3, 143-147, DOI: 10.1080/14888386.2014.930716

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Conserving dryland biodiversity: a future vision of sustainable dryland development

Masumi Gudkaa*, Jonathan Daviesa, Lene Poulsenb, Björn Schulte-Herbrüggenc**, Kathy MacKinnond,Nigel Crawhalle, William D. Henwoodf, Nigel Dudleyg and Jessica Smithc***

aGlobal Drylands Initiative, IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), P.O. Box 68200, Nairobi 00200, Kenya;bDryland Ecosystems, Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM), IUCN, Gland, Switzerland; cWorld Conservation MonitoringCentre, UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK; dWorld Commission onProtected Areas, IUCN, Gland, Switzerland; eTheme on Indigenous Communities, Local Communities, Equity and Protected Areas(TILCEPA), IUCN, Gland, Switzerland; fTemperate Grasslands Conservation Initiative, WCPA–IUCN, Kilmarnock Crescent, NorthVancouver, BC, Canada V7J 2Z3; gEquilibrium Research, 47 The Quays, Cumberland Road, Spike Island, Bristol, BS1 6UQ, UK

(Received 16 April 2014; final version received 31 May 2014)

Water scarcity has largely driven the adaptations of organisms to survive dryland conditions. As a result, there are manyanimal and plant species and habitats found only in drylands: some semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas are among themost biodiverse regions in the world. Despite the value of such biomes, protected areas in drylands are not representa-tive of all the dryland subtypes. For example, deserts are disproportionately represented whilst temperate grasslands haveamongst the lowest level of protection of all biomes at approximately 3.4%. Nevertheless, local communities inhabitingdrylands have informally conserved large areas as a by-product of sustainable management practices or cultural beliefs.The drylands offer significant opportunities for achieving both conservation and development objectives simultaneouslyand in many cases have been shown to do so. The Aichi targets (targets established by Parties to the Convention on Bio-logical Diversity at the tenth Conference of Parties in 2010) on protected areas could be more easily achieved, or evensurpassed, in drylands by legitimising and supporting Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs), and tradi-tional natural resource management strategies. A more nuanced vision of sustainably managed drylands is thereforeneeded: one that reflects social and ecological realities and provides a framework against which policies and investmentscan be assessed. Such a vision should be based on the intersection between sustainable land management and biodiver-sity conservation, which encompasses the following four components: adapting green economic growth to the drylands;conservation and sustainable management of dryland biodiversity; and health as the basis for secure food and water pro-vision; and resilience and risk management in uncertain environments. To realise such an ambitious vision in the dry-lands requires a strategic and broad suite of actions in the following four fields: innovation, knowledge and science;incentives and investment; governance and empowerment; mainstreaming dryland biodiversity.

Keywords: biodiversity conservation; drylands; governance; livelihoods; sustainable development; sustainablemanagement

Introduction

The richness of dryland biodiversity

Drylands, including dry sub-humid, semi-arid, arid andhyper-arid lands, cover 41.3% (Safriel et al. 2005) of theEarth’s land surface. Drylands are defined by water scar-city and characterised by seasonal climatic extremes andunpredictable rainfall patterns. Water scarcity has led tounique physiological and behavioural adaptations inmany plant and animal species. Variations in ‘dry’ cli-mate regimes (summer, fog, winter-rainfall) topography,geology, soil type and quality, fire regimes, herbivoryand the influence of human management have also beenimportant factors in driving dryland species diversity. Asa result, drylands consist of a patchwork of stronglycontrasting habitats, which determines the distribution ofliving organisms (Bonkoungou 2003) where one habitat

may be species poor and another species rich. Mist oasesfound in a few mountainous regions of the Sahara, EastAfrica and the Arabian Desert illustrate well differencesin biodiversity within habitats. The Mediterranean Basin,the Californian Chaparral, the Cape Floristic Kingdomand the Brazilian Cerrado are examples of semi-arid anddry sub-humid areas which are among the most biodi-verse in the world. Furthermore, some drylands, includ-ing some temperate grasslands such as North America’stall grass prairie, are among the most productive vegeta-tion types in the world (Packard and Mutel 1997).

Overall, some 10,000 (mammal, bird and amphibian)species can be found in drylands, including 64% of allbirds, 55% of mammals and 25% of amphibians (Davieset al. 2012). Despite harsh conditions in desert biomesthey support 25% of global terrestrial fauna, compared tothose of tropical and sub-tropical moist broadleaf forests

*Corresponding author. Email: masumi.gudka@iucn.org**Present address: Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Kräftriket 2B, 11419 Stockholm, Sweden.***Present address: Peoplesized Ltd., 50 Fairycroft Road, Saffron Walden CB10 1LZ, UK.

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(the richest terrestrial biome), which support around 70%of global terrestrial fauna (Safriel et al. 2005). Drylandsare well represented in many designations of global bio-diversity importance. For example, drylands are home to35% of the global hotspot areas (Davies et al. 2012) and28% of the total area of World Heritage Sites (WHS).One third of all Endemic Bird Areas (33%) and Impor-tant Bird Areas (31%) are also found in drylands (Bird-life International and Conservation International 2010).

Dryland biodiversity also provides significant globaleconomic values through the supply of ecosystem goodsand services. At least 30% of the world’s cultivatedplants and many livestock breeds originated in drylands,providing an important genetic reservoir, increasinglymore valuable for climate change adaptation (Safrielet al. 2005). Cultural identity and spirituality are centralto dryland communities and can be integral to conserv-ing dryland ecosystems.

Managing and conserving dryland biodiversity

Although the full extent of dryland degradation is notknown, factors such as their historic marginalisationcombined with new developments such as accelerateddevelopment put drylands at particular risk. Globally,10%–20% of drylands may experience severe degrada-tion (Reynolds et al. 2007), contributing to decreases inprimary production and declines in species richness,reducing the ability of ecosystems to provide goods andservices. The identified drivers of biodiversity loss arecomplex and inter-connected, including human popula-tion growth, conversion of habitat for expansion of farm-ing and urban areas, and invasive alien species.Furthermore, human-induced climate change and habitatfragmentation is altering species migration patterns, shift-ing the range that many species can occupy and acceler-ating the spread of invasive alien species.

Biodiversity is central to the resilience of many dry-land communities and land degradation may play a dualrole of increasing exposure as well as vulnerability toclimate change impacts. Despite the importance of dry-land biodiversity for conservation and human liveli-hoods, they have received less attention and conservationfunding than other biomes such as tropical rainforests.

Many protected areas in drylands are hyper aridareas often chosen more because of their limited agri-cultural potential while other dryland biomes and eco-tones are under-represented in the global protected areaestate. This is evident in that some 9% of the world’sdesert and xeric grassland biomes are designated asprotected areas (Davies et al. 2012) in contrast to pro-tection of only about 3.4% of temperate grasslands (allof which are not classed as dry), often in small reservesin highly fragmented environments (Bertzky et al.2012). However, many of the world’s protected areas

do encompass significant dryland areas, noted for theirfloral and faunal biodiversity, their cultural importanceand their values in terms of ecosystem services in atime of increasing challenges from climate change(Dudley et al. 2010).

Drylands may be unusual in offering significantscope for greatly surpassing current conservation targetsthrough genuine complementarity between conservationand development goals. Target 11 of the Aichi Biodiver-sity Targets promotes securing 17% of terrestrial areas‘conserved through effectively and equitably managed,ecologically representative and well-connected systemsof protected areas and other effective area-based conser-vation measures (CBD 2010). It is encouraging to notethe designation of the new 500,000 ha Altyn Dala pro-tected area by the government of Kazakhstan and a pri-vate sector initiative in Chile to donate 250,000 ha ofgrassland for a new national park.

Outside the formal protected area system there isgreat potential to recognise other areas where indige-nous management practices and knowledge systemsconserve ecosystem functioning, thereby safeguardingproduction of food and other goods. These Indigenousand Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs) are tacitlyrecognised in target 11, but often fall outside the IUCNprotected area categorisation system (Dudley 2008).Unfortunately in many cases this indigenous protectionis not officially recognised and may even be under-mined by government policies that restrict traditionalland-use practices such as transhumance, or underminecustomary governance.

Conserving dryland biodiversity and sustaining life

The world’s drylands are home to 2 billion people (Safri-el et al. 2005; Middleton et al. 2011), who depend on nat-ural resources for their livelihoods. Through seasonalmigrations, people, livestock and wildlife have influencedthe structure, composition, distribution and dynamics ofnatural habitats in large territories, and contributed to thecreation of unique landscapes. These communities oftenshare communal property and practice managementregimes such as communal grazing and harvesting ingrasslands and forests, and communal water-sharing sys-tems for agriculture. These communal arrangements arecentral to sustaining ecosystem services, to enabling sus-tainable livelihoods and ultimately to conserving biodi-versity in drylands.

Although dryland peoples have a deep knowledge oftheir environment and are best placed to conserve theirbiodiversity, it is evident that many pressures are weak-ening their capacity to do so. To conserve drylands bio-diversity, support must be given to adapt indigenous andlocal knowledge systems to the changing political, eco-nomic and environmental (including climatic) conditions.

144 M. GUDKA ET AL.

A future vision for drylands

The future of dryland areas will require a deeper under-standing of how cultural, economic and ecological sys-tems can support each other. It should include at leastfour components based on the intersection between sus-tainable land management and biodiversity conservation:

(1) Adapting green economic growth to the dry-lands can play a prominent role in ensuring thatecosystems are protected for human wellbeing.Strategies must consider dryland ecology, cli-matic uncertainties and the high levels of riskthat this implies, and approaches of localresource managers to maintain resilient liveli-hoods. Government policies that encourage landuse changes need to be better informed of widerecosystem and economic costs of such changes.A great effort is needed to evaluate existing landuse strategies in terms of productivity, resilienceand wider ecosystem benefits. Stronger scienceand knowledge are needed to make the case forgreen economic growth in the drylands.

(2) Conservation and sustainable management ofdryland biodiversity should reflect the importantrole that drylands play for agricultural develop-ment, promoting ecologically-suitable farmingpractices, such as agroforestry, pastoralism orconservation agriculture as an alternative tointensive farming methods. Indigenous knowl-edge and local institutions could support theeffective implementation of such practices. Biodi-versity conservation needs to be managed at alandscape scale to support effective farming sys-tems as a tool for sustainable agricultural devel-opment.

(3) Land health as the basis for secure food andwater provision; land health is an establishedconcept in a few countries but lacks adequategovernment support particularly in the develop-ing world. Improved integration of land andwater planning at all levels of governance isessential for sustainable ecosystem management.As a result ecosystem goods and services will beprotected thereby mitigating drought and otherclimate risks, and land degradation which will inreturn lead to development and conservation ben-efits.

(4) Resilience and risk management in uncertainenvironments is at the heart of dryland liveli-hoods but is poorly reflected in public decisionmaking or development investment. A greater

understanding of resilience in the dryland contextis needed to inform policy making and institu-tions of the need to strengthen the institutionsthemselves as a foundation for resilience capacitybuilding. Institutions are needed at multiple lev-els, to integrate planning and governance at alocal level but also at the international level toenable negotiations, for example over transboun-dary resources. Improved coherence in planningwill also help to reduce the harmful effects ofemergency interventions

Strategies for dryland biodiversity conservation

Scientific understanding of drylands has improved overthe past two decades, but public investment continues tobe largely driven by the short-term interests of politicalelites rather than the local needs of dryland peoples.Even where government attitudes towards the drylandsare more sympathetic, public sector constraints can putundue pressure on ecosystems that lead to their furtherfragmentation and mismanagement, for example wherewater and land resources are planned and developed byseparate ministries. Such failings can be addressed to alarge extent by empowering dryland communities (whomanage land in a largely integrative way) to becomemore influential in decision making processes. This willhelp fill the policy – implementation gap and providebenefits from reducing environmental degradation tostrengthen resilience and promote more sustainabledevelopment through a balanced mosaic of protectionand management approaches.

Innovation, knowledge and science

Greater attention to local and indigenous knowledge andmore collaborative research to allow mutual validation ofdifferent knowledge systems is needed. An improvedunderstanding of dryland ecology and land health is alsoneeded for improved management and monitoring toenhance decision making. Communication and dissemi-nation of research must be accessible to dryland manag-ers, and other decision makers for it to be of value.

Incentives and investment

Appropriate context specific incentives and investmentare required to promote sustainable land managementand biodiversity in drylands. Local innovations shouldbe more strongly encouraged, through improvements ineducation, greater access to finance and other servicesand increased support for entrepreneurialism around newbiodiversity-based business opportunities. Investmentsbased on biodiversity conservation, such as tourism or

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payments for ecosystem services, can create incentivesfor environmental custodianship, but are often under-mined by the lack of relevant institutions or capacities.Such investments also need to be supported throughappropriate governance mechanisms. Policies that favourless sustainable land use options need to be reviewedand revised in favour of those promoting more environ-mentally-friendly land use options. Investment and incen-tive strategies should be developed that reflect theimportance of diversity for dryland resilience.

Governance and empowerment

Sustainable management and conservation of drylandbiodiversity depend on good governance at all scales(Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2013). Land managers need tobe enabled to exercise controls over their resources,while state institutions need stronger capacity to regulateresource use on a larger scale. Good governance requiresthese controls at different levels to be made more partici-pative, transparent, equitable and accountable. Good gov-ernance also depends on the principle of subsidiarity, ordelegating decision making and implementation to thelowest decision-making level possible.

It is clear that uncertainty over where responsibilityfor natural resource management lies is one of the princi-pal factors in dryland degradation and biodiversity loss.In many countries, and particularly in the developingworld, land managers in the drylands need greater sup-port to enforce rules of sustainable land management. Insome cases this means the right to manage the resourcesthat they use, or the right to implement rules overresource use. In other cases they may nominally havethe right of management or the right of exclusion, butrequire the skills and resources to exercise these rightsmore effectively. Addressing these needs is essential toachieving sustainable resource use and wise managementof dryland ecosystems.

Conservation strategies will benefit from a variety ofapproaches from formal protected areas to community-conserved areas (e.g. ICCAs).

Mainstreaming dryland biodiversity

Day to day land-use planning by farmers, pastoralistsand other dryland managers are usually based – whetherexplicitly or intuitively – on the manager’s understandingof water, land and other natural resources as well as theinteractions between these factors, resource degradation,disease, conflict and other livelihood and welfare con-cerns. Government services are rarely so holistic andmulti-sectorial in their approaches. Strategies are there-fore needed to ensure more integrated and holistic plan-ning of multiple resources, and to support and augment

the skills of community land managers. A priority is togreatly increase the use of tools that integrate the plan-ning of land, water and biodiversity and to accelerate theadoption of effective participatory approaches by govern-ment services. Mainstreaming dryland biodiversity inkey sector strategies such as agriculture, or povertyreduction strategies can contribute both to conservationand more sustainable development. National BiodiversityStrategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) can play an impor-tant role in linking biodiversity and development priori-ties by factoring ecosystem services into planning inorder to maintain the resilience and productivity of dry-land agro-ecosystems.

Maintaining dryland, biodiversity will only become apriority if its important contribution to livelihoods, pov-erty and national development needs are effectively com-municated and recognised. As the MillenniumEcosystem Assessment and the Millennium DevelopmentGoals have underlined, a disaggregated approach to con-servation and development in drylands serves the inter-ests of neither.

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Conserving dryland biodiversity: a future vision of sustainable dryland development

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