Global priorities of environmental issues to combat food insecurity and biodiversity loss

Various environmental challenges are rapidly threatening ecosystems and societies globally. Major interventions and a strategic approach are required to minimize harm and to avoid reaching catastrophic tipping points. Setting evidence-based priorities aids maximizing the impact of the limited resour...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science of The Total Environment
Main Authors: Scherer, Laura, Svenning, Jens Christian, Huang, Jing, Seymour, Colleen L., Sandel, Brody, Mueller, Nathaniel, Kummu, Matti, Bekunda, Mateete, Bruelheide, Helge, Hochman, Zvi, Siebert, Stefan, Rueda, Oscar, van Bodegom, Peter M.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2020
Subjects:
Agriculture
Ecosystems
Effectiveness
Environmental protection
Global change
Prioritization
Ocean acidification
Online Access:https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/publications/global-priorities-of-environmental-issues-to-combat-food-insecurity-and-biodiversity-loss(04fa44fb-f783-4761-907b-3513918bcbad).html
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139096
https://pure.au.dk/ws/files/224576707/1_s2.0_S0048969720326139_main.pdf
http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85084173472&partnerID=8YFLogxK
Description
Summary:Various environmental challenges are rapidly threatening ecosystems and societies globally. Major interventions and a strategic approach are required to minimize harm and to avoid reaching catastrophic tipping points. Setting evidence-based priorities aids maximizing the impact of the limited resources available for environmental interventions. Focusing on protecting both food security and biodiversity, international experts prioritized major environmental challenges for intervention based on three comprehensive criteria – importance, neglect, and tractability. The top priorities differ between food security and biodiversity. For food security, the top priorities are pollinator loss, soil compaction, and nutrient depletion, and for biodiversity conservation, ocean acidification and land and sea use (especially habitat degradation) are the main concerns. While climate change might be the most pressing environmental challenge and mitigation is clearly off-track, other issues rank higher because of climate change's high attention in research. Research and policy agendas do not yet consistently cover these priorities. Thus, a shift in attention towards the high-priority environmental challenges, identified here, is needed to increase the effectiveness of global environmental protection.

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