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Our planet is facing increasing challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics, poverty, and many other problems closely linked to a deteriorating environment. Meanwhile, one of our most important assets, rangers working in protected and conserved areas responsible for managing large tracts of the planet's lands and waters, are often underutilized, underrecognized and underequipped. They are generally left out of the debate about conservation and sustainable development policy, despite being central to the success of those policies. This paper outlines the need for global leaders across multiple sectors to recognize the profession of rangers as essential planetary health workers and to position rangers more effectively within global conservation and environmental policy mechanisms. It introduces the challenges facing rangers, the emerging diversity of roles within the ranger profession and the important contribution of rangers to conservation and sustainable development. It presents policy and implementation avenues to improve recognition and professionalization of rangers as key executors of conservation and development policy, particularly considering the recent Global Biodiversity Framework ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the European Union's main instrument for agricultural planning, with a new reform approved for 2023–2027. The CAP intends to align with the European Green Deal (EGD), a set of policy initiatives underpinning sustainable development and climate neutrality in the European Union (EU), but several flaws cast doubts about the compatibility of the objectives of these 2 policies. We reviewed recent literature on the potential of CAP environmental objectives for integration with the EGD: protection of biodiversity, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and sustainable management of natural resources. The CAP lacks appropriate planning measures, furthering instead risks to biodiversity and ecosystem services driven by landscape and biotic homogenization. Funding allocation mechanisms are not tailored to mitigate agricultural emissions, decreasing the efficiency of climate mitigation actions. The legislation subsidies farmers making extensive use of synthetic inputs without adequately supporting organic production, hindering the transition toward sustainable practices. We recommend proper control mechanisms be introduced in CAP Strategic Plans from each member state to ensure the EU is set on a sustainable production and consumption path. These include proportional assignment of funds to each CAP objective, quantitative targets to set goals and evidence‐based interventions, and relevant indicators to facilitate effective monitoring of environmental performance. Both the CAP and the EGD should maintain ambitious environmental commitments in the face of crisis to avoid further degradation of the natural resources on which production systems stand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanisms that reliably and efficiently guide practitioners to find relevant evidence are urgent for conservation decision‐making in Chilean Patagonia. The objective of this study was to systematically collect, characterize, and synthesize the extensive evidence about conservation knowledge in Chilean Patagonia focusing on the impacts of global change drivers on ecosystems and human–nature relationships, identifying knowledge gaps, and providing policy recommendations. The quality of the evidence was assessed through a predefined level‐of‐evidence hierarchy scale, applied to a sample of the studies reviewed. We compiled ~1000 studies documenting that evidence focusing on terrestrial and marine ecosystems has grown exponentially. For terrestrial ecosystems, most studies have addressed climate change, habitat change, and invasive species; while for marine ecosystems, studies have focused on pollution, invasive species, and habitat change. We identified that an important gap is the study of the social dimensions of conservation, and future efforts should focus on incorporating traditional and local knowledge as this can help point the way to ecosystem conservation. The appraisal of the quality of the evidence showed that ~80% of the sample represented reliable evidence with underlying data and an experimental design. Enhanced efforts to deliver this evidence to decision‐makers in a user‐friendly format for evidence uptake in conservation policy are urgent. In this review, we provide a tool that can help practitioners to find evidence reliably to improve decision‐making for the conservation of ecosystems in Chilean Patagonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) scenarios provide opportunities to explore global climate and pollution mitigation pathways with socioeconomic features, but they might be limited on regional-scale projections due to inadequate consideration of local policies. Here, we simulated China's PM2.5 air quality with local policy-based scenarios (Dynamic Projection for Emissions in China (DPEC)) and the CMIP6 scenarios. We found both emission inventories can reproduce China's base-year PM2.5 and chemical aerosols while using DPEC emissions could better match in-situ observations. In addition, DPEC mitigation scenarios can better capture China's PM2.5 decline during 2015-2019 (22% under SSP2-45-policy and 30% under SSP1-26-best) with observations (~28%) than CMIP6 emissions. With the effects of current-year bias and inadequate considerations of pollution control policies, PM2.5 projections in 2030 and 2050 with CMIP6 mitigation scenarios are 42%-48% (9-13 µg/m3) and 59%-73% (8-12 µg/m3) higher than projections with DEPC. Our study suggests the community should incorporate more region-specific environmental policy in future scenario designs. Plain Language Summary Global emission scenarios might be limited on regional-scale air quality projections because of inadequate consideration of local environmental policy. Here, we simulated China's air quality variations through 2050 with global emission data sets and local policy-based emission scenarios. Both global and local emissions can reasonably estimate China's air quality; however, estimations with local emission scenarios are more correlated with surface observations and can better capture China's rapid air quality improvement during 2015-2019. Local policy deficiencies and current year bias further make future air quality projections driven by global emission scenarios 42%-73% higher than driven by local policy-based scenarios. Our findings could offer insights for the research community to incorporate more detailed regional information in future global scenario designs, which might help to better investigate the climate change impacts and improve global scenario applicability to regional scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a key threat to biodiversity. To conserve species under climate change, ecologists and conservation scientists suggest 2 main conservation strategies regarding land use: supporting species' range shifts to enable it to follow its climatic requirements by creating migration pathways, such as corridors and stepping stones, and conserving climate refugia (i.e., existing habitat areas that are somewhat buffered from climate change). The policy instruments that could be used to implement these conservation strategies have yet to be evaluated comprehensively from an economic perspective. The economic analyses of environmental policy instruments are often based on ecological effectiveness and cost‐effectiveness criteria. We adapted these general criteria to evaluate policy instruments for species' conservation under climate change and applied them to a conceptual analysis of land purchases, offsets, and conservation payments. Depending on whether the strategy supporting species' range shifts or conserving climate refugia is selected, the evaluation of the policy instruments differed substantially. For example, to ensure ecological effectiveness, habitat persistence over time was especially important for climate refugia and was best achieved by a land‐purchase policy instrument. In contrast, for the strategy supporting range shifts to be ecologically effective, a high degree of flexibility in the location of conserved sites was required to ensure that new habitat sites can be created in the species' new range. Offset programs were best suited for that because the location of conservation sites can be chosen comparatively freely and may also be adapted over time. Article impact statement: Evaluation of policy instruments for species conservation under climate change should include both ecological and economic criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity loss and climate change are often considered as intertwined issues. However, they do not receive equal attention. Even in the context of nature‐based climate solutions, which consider ecosystems to be crucial to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change, the potential role of biodiversity has received little attention. Here this essay emphasizes biodiversity as the cause—not only the consequence—to help society and nature face challenges associated with the changing climate. Reconsidering and emphasizing the linkages between these twin environmental crises is urgently needed to make collective efforts for the environment truly effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: China has assumed a crucial importance in debates about climate change mitigation. On the one hand, China is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gasses and pollution. On the other, it has invested more in renewable energy than any other country and is making real efforts to address the consequences of rapid industrialisation. There are three key questions for students of comparative political economy that emerge from the Chinese experience: first, what is the relationship between economic development and authoritarian rule? Second, what role has China's distinct social and political system played in creating and addressing environmental problems? Third, what domestic and international implications does the ‘China model’ have? In short, will China's authoritarian leaders be able to manage the expectations of its own people and those of the so‐called international community? This article considers the often paradoxical and contradictory nature of the authoritarian Chinese government's current environmental policies and suggests that while they may have some success at the domestic level, they may still be an obstacle to international cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last quarter of a century, physical geography has not been served well by the often-homogenizing influence of global change science, as exemplified by the structures and activities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, certain areas of physical geography may have been at fault in being too little, and too uncritically, engaged with international, interdisciplinary research programmes in global environmental change. Moving forward, physical geography should look towards an independently constituted framework that incorporates the complexities of landscape response to both external forcing and internal feedbacks and, above all, works with others to prevent the socio-spatial injustices associated with climate change from being realized. Réflexions menées sur le GIEC et l'étude scientifique des changements planétaires : vers une approche plus axée sur la géographie (physique) Au cours du dernier quart de siècle, la géographie physique a été desservie par l'effet d'homogénéisation de l'étude scientifique des changements planétaires, comme en témoignent les structures et activités du Groupe d'experts intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat (GIEC). Par contre, certains domaines de la géographie physique pourraient être en partie responsables du fait que peu d'efforts aient été consacrés à l'étude et à la remise en question des programmes de recherche internationaux et interdisciplinaires portant sur les changements environnementaux planétaires. Pour la géographie physique, la mise en place d'un cadre de travail conçu de manière indépendante permettrait de progresser et d'intégrer tous les éléments de problématique de la réaction du paysage au forçage externe et aux rétroactions internes, mais aussi et surtout d'assurer une collaboration en vue d'éviter que se concrétisent les injustices sociospatiales liées aux conséquences des changements climatiques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Understanding the impact of land use change within assemblages is fundamental to mitigation policies at local and regional scale. Here, we aim to quantify how site-level terrestrial assemblages are responding to land use change in Colombia a mega-diverse country and to project future biodiversity under different scenarios of land use change associated with climate change policies. Location: Colombia (northern South America). Methods: We collated original biodiversity data from 17 publications (285 sites) that examined how human impact affects terrestrial biodiversity in Colombia. From each site we estimated compositional intactness (i.e. compositional similarity to undisturbed sites). We fitted generalized linear mixed-effects models to estimate how these measures of local biodiversity vary across land use habitats. Using space-for-time substitution, we applied our estimates to hindcast biodiversity changes since 1500 and project future changes under climate change policies of the four representative concentration pathways (RCPs). Results: Assemblages in urban, cropland and pasture sites were compositionally very different from those in primary vegetation. We infer that average compositional intactness has been reduced by 18% across Colombia to date, with strong regional variation. The best RCP scenario for future biodiversity is GCAM-RCP4.5, a path that favours the expansion of secondary forests under a strong carbon market; while the worst is MESSAGE-RCP8.5, 'the business-as-usual' scenario. Main conclusions: Land use change has driven an increasing change in the composition of ecological assemblages in Colombia. By 2095, the implementation of carbon markets policy of climate change from GCAM-RCP4.5 could mitigate these changes in community composition. In contrast, the business-asusual scenario MESSAGE-RCP8.5 predicts a steep community change placing the quality of ecosystems at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the interactions between agricultural production and climate is necessary for sound decision-making in climate policy. Gridded and high-resolution crop simulation has emerged as a useful tool for building this understanding. Large uncertainty exists in this utilization, obstructing its capacity as a tool to devise adaptation strategies. Increasing focus has been given to sources of uncertainties for climate scenarios, input-data, and model, but uncertainties due to model parameter or calibration are still unknown. Here, we use publicly available geographical data sets as input to the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate model (EPIC) for simulating global-gridded maize yield. Impacts of climate change are assessed up to the year 2099 under a climate scenario generated by HadEM2-ES under RCP 8.5. We apply five strategies by shifting one specific parameter in each simulation to calibrate the model and understand the effects of calibration. Regionalizing crop phenology or harvest index appears effective to calibrate the model for the globe, but using various values of phenology generates pronounced difference in estimated climate impact. However, projected impacts of climate change on global maize production are consistently negative regardless of the parameter being adjusted. Different values of model parameter result in a modest uncertainty at global level, with difference of the global yield change less than 30% by the 2080s. The uncertainty subjects to decrease if applying model calibration or input data quality control. Calibration has a larger effect at local scales, implying the possible types and locations for adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the environmental condition in Saudi Arabia. The author highlights the climatic condition of the country comparing it to a furnace not to mention the effects of climate change due to extensive carbon emission in the atmosphere. Furthermore, the author also outlined the plans of the Saudi Arabian government to address the issue including the establishment environmental programs and the transition from carbon-based economy to renewable energy.

The absence of boreal forests from global policy agendas on sustainable development and climate change mitigation represents a massive missed opportunity for environmental protection. The boreal zone contains some of the world's largest pools of terrestrial carbon that, if not safeguarded from a conversion to a net source of greenhouse gases, could seriously exacerbate global climate change. At the same time, boreal countries have a strong tradition of forest management-expertise that could be effectively leveraged toward global and national carbon mitigation targets and sustainable development. Current obstacles against such contributions include weak incentives for carbon sequestration and a reluctance to embrace change by forest managers and policy makers. We discuss possible solutions to overcome these obstacles, including the improvement of ineffective incentives, the development of alternative forest management strategies, and the need to maintain ecosystem resilience through the pursuit of policy and management options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cases where assisted colonisation is the appropriate conservation tool, the selection of recipient sites is a major challenge. Here, we propose a framework for site selection that can be applied to the Australian biota, where planning for assisted colonisation is in its infancy. Characteristics that will be important drivers in the decision-making process include the size of a recipient site, the potential to augment corridors and respond to niche gaps, the maximisation of climatic buffering, bioregional similarity, tenure security, and the minimisation of opportunities for hybridisation and invasiveness. Sites we suggest be precluded from assisted colonisation include sites of high species endemism, IUCN category 1 reference reserves and fully-functioning threatened ecological communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Aim This paper describes a set of integrative scenarios developed in the ALARM (Assessing LArge-scale environmental Risks for biodiversity with tested Methods) project. The ultimate aim of ALARM was to develop and test methods and protocols for the assessment of large-scale environmental risks to biodiversity and to evaluate mitigation options. Scenarios provide a tool for exploring such risks and the policy options to mitigate them; therefore they play a central role within the ALARM project. Methods Three integrative scenarios (liberalization, business as might be usual, sustainability) were developed and illustrated using the econometric model described in a subsequent paper. They are contextualized with projections from climate models and provide the input for model-based assessments of biodiversity trends. Additionally, three shock scenarios were developed (Gulf Stream collapse, peak oil, pandemic) to demonstrate the limits of linear extrapolation. As these extend beyond model capabilities, they are discussed semi-quantitatively based on modelling insights. Results Although the policy impacts on biodiversity are different for different pressures, biomes and species groups, some general trends could be identified. An extension of current EU policies will act as a brake on current trends by slowing down the loss of biodiversity in many cases and in most biomes, but it will be capable of neither halting nor of reversing the loss. Liberalization has the effect of accelerating biodiversity loss across the board, with few exceptions. A coherent sustainability scenario is clearly the most effective at preserving biodiversity, but the variant tested here still does not halt losses in all cases. Main conclusions Current EU policies for protecting biodiversity appear to be insufficient to reverse ongoing losses. Coherent sustainability strategies are effective at conserving biodiversity, but in order to assess losses and then reverse them, measures would need to be introduced that extend beyond the steps tested in the ALARM sustainability scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L'adaptation aux changements climatiques dans les réseaux d'aires protégées du Canada : état des lieux La Commission mondiale des aires protégées a récemment laissé entendre que les actions en faveur de la conservation sont vouées à l'échec, à moins que ces dernières tiennent compte des changements climatiques. Pour ce faire, les organismes chargés des aires protégées doivent dès maintenant s'assurer de l'intégration des changements climatiques dans les politiques, les cadres de planification et les modes de gestion. Le présent article rend compte des résultats d'une enquête réalisée conjointement par l'Université de Waterloo et le Conseil canadien des aires écologiques. Celle-ci vise à dresser un état des lieux sur l'adaptation aux changements climatiques dans tout le réseau d'aires protégées du Canada qui relève du palier fédéral, provincial ou territorial. Il se dégage de l'analyse plusieurs constats importants. Tout d'abord, sur l'ensemble des organismes chargés des aires protégées que nous avons interrogés, les trois quarts ont déclaré que les changements climatiques ont déjà des effets visibles sur leur réseau d'aires protégées. Ensuite, 94 pour cent des participants à l'enquête estiment qu'au cours des vingt-cinq prochaines années, l'enjeu des changements climatiques sera au cœur de la politique et de la planification des aires protégées. Finalement, malgré la perception voulant que les changements climatiques exercent une pression croissante, la portée des mesures politiques, de planification, de gestion ou de recherche mises de l'avant par la plupart des organismes jusqu'à maintenant demeure limitée. Si 91 pour cent des organismes indiquent ne pas disposer des capacités nécessaires en ce moment pour réagir de façon optimale aux changements climatiques, l'enquête a permis de mettre en évidence un écart significatif entre la perception de la gravité des changements climatiques et la capacité des organismes chargés des aires protégées de s'adapter. La faiblesse du financement, une capacité d'action limitée, et un manque de compréhension des changements climatiques et de leurs répercussions réelles ou potentielles comptent parmi les difficultés auxquelles sont confrontés les organismes canadiens chargés des aires protégées. Il est impératif de les surmonter afin que ces organismes puissent exercer leurs mandats et être en mesure d'assumer leurs responsabilités concernant la protection et la biodiversité des aires, par exemple, la protection de l'intégrité du patrimoine naturel au Canada dans un contexte de changements climatiques accélérés. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few decades petroleum has been consumed at a much faster pace than new reserves have been discovered. The point at which global oil extraction will attain a peak (“peak oil”) and begin a period of unavoidable decline is approaching. This eventuality will drive fundamental changes in the quantity and nature of energy flows through the human economic system, which probably will be accompanied by economic turmoil, political conflicts, and a high level of social tension. Besides being a geological and economic issue, peak oil is also a fundamental concern as it pertains to ecological systems and conservation because economics is a subsystem of the global ecosystem and changes in human energy-related behaviors can lead to a broad range of effects on natural ecosystems, ranging from overuse to abandonment. As it becomes more difficult to meet energy demands, environmental considerations may be easily superseded. Given the vital importance of ecosystems and ecosystem services in a postpetroleum era, it is crucially important to wisely manage our ecosystems during the transition period to an economy based on little or no use of fossil fuels. Good policies can be formulated through awareness and understanding gained from scenario-based assessments. Presently, most widely used global scenarios of environmental change do not incorporate resource limitation, including those of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Considering the potential magnitude of the effects of peak oil on society and nature, the development of resource-constrained scenarios should be addressed immediately. Ecologists and conservation biologists are in an important position to analyze the situation and provide guidance, yet the topic is noticeably absent from ecological discussions. We urge politicians, corporate chief executives, thought leaders, and citizens to consider this problem seriously because it is likely to develop into one of the key environmental issues of the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of literature during calendar year 2008 focused on topics related to environmental policies and sustainable development, and economic policies. This review is divided into these sections: sustainable development, watershed management, climate change and disaster risk management, environmental policies management, economic growth, water supply policies, water consumption, water price regulation and valuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recognition of unavoidable changes that human actions are producing in our environment, the term adaptation has become ubiquitous in the environmental and climate-change literature. Human adaptation is a field with a significant history in anthropology, yet anthropological contributions to the burgeoning field of climate change remain limited. This “In Focus” section presents studies of local adaptations to climate variation and change. Each is concerned with current environmental challenges and future environmental change, and each study is placed within a wider context that includes processes of globalization and integration into market economies, formal and informal institutions, and disasters. These studies highlight the challenges involved in understanding complex adaptations under conditions of stress. They also illustrate how anthropologists engage the larger climate-change and human-adaptation discussions and enhance our ability to respond to the challenges of a changing environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about intra- and inter-generational equity, connecting environmental justice discourse with necessary responses to climate change. It offers a review of the role of globalization in this pervasive context, contrasting the disaggregated nature of localized impacts, and seeks to address the potential for adjusting law-policy frameworks as a key part of the search for solutions. It argues that environmental justice approaches can incorporate values into law-policy processes based upon vital aspects of the integrity and functioning of communities, distributional fairness, and capacities for wider engagement and participation in the search for necessary behavioural change. The conclusion is that the ultimate success of the urgent process of addressing climate-related threats, through a meaningful degree of mitigation and adaptation, and multiple levels of decision-making and response, must be informed by the precepts of environmental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northern Australia's globally significant savannas and rivers face major threats, from cattle to weeds to land clearing to climate change. In the face of imperatives and pressures such as reducing carbon emissions, nature conservation, alleviating Indigenous disadvantage, the resources boom and global food security, how should development be managed to protect its globally significant ecosystems? Nine planks in a ‘Sustainable Northern Australia’ agenda are proposed: (i) enhance investment in mitigating pervasive landscape threats; (ii) strengthen support for Indigenous Caring for Country activities and incorporation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge into land management; (iii) align and strengthen invasive species control and management; (iv) facilitate new economic development pathways focused on sustainability; (v) build climate resilience by maintaining and enhancing landscape-scale connectivity; (vi) protect free-flowing rivers from dams and major water resource development; (vii) establish and effectively manage a large interconnected network of protected areas; (viii) develop cooperative governance arrangements; and (ix) enhance knowledge generation and research and monitoring capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. Horizon scanning is an essential tool for environmental scientists if they are to contribute to the evidence base for Government, its agencies and other decision makers to devise and implement environmental policies. The implication of not foreseeing issues that are foreseeable is illustrated by the contentious responses to genetically modified herbicide-tolerant crops in the UK, and by challenges surrounding biofuels, foot and mouth disease, avian influenza and climate change. 2. A total of 35 representatives from organizations involved in environmental policy, academia, scientific journalism and horizon scanning were asked to use wide consultation to identify the future novel or step changes in threats to, and opportunities for, biodiversity that might arise in the UK up to 2050, but that had not been important in the recent past. At least 452 people were consulted. 3. Cases for 195 submitted issues were distributed to all participants for comments and additions. All issues were scored (probability, hazard, novelty and overall score) prior to a 2-day workshop. Shortlisting to 41 issues and then the final 25 issues, together with refinement of these issues, took place at the workshop during another two rounds of discussion and scoring. 4. We provide summaries of the 25 shortlisted issues and outline the research needs. 5. We suggest that horizon scanning incorporating wide consultation with providers and users of environmental science is used by environmental policy makers and researchers. This can be used to identify gaps in knowledge and policy, and to identify future key issues for biodiversity, including those arising from outside the domains of ecology and biodiversity. 6. Synthesis and applications. Horizon scanning can be used by environmental policy makers and researchers to identify gaps in knowledge and policy. Drawing on the experience, expertise and research of policy advisors, academics and journalists, this exercise helps set the agenda for policy, practice and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biogeography is a vibrant academic discipline that plays an important role in framing and directing debates on some of the most important environmental issues of our time, such as the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, biotic homogenization and the effectiveness of global conservation policy. Despite this, biogeography suffers from a low public profile and may consequently be poorly understood by the public. Here I review the representation of the term biogeography, and a selection of biogeographers in the public sphere (newspapers, websites, blogs) and the academic sphere (journals and reports) to understand more fully the public perception of the discipline. As anticipated, the survey suggests that the term ‘biogeography’ has little public currency, and that the public still largely associate the subject area with either eminent Victorians such as A.R. Wallace or modern greats such as E.O. Wilson. I conclude by discussing the potential consequences of the virtual absence of biogeography from public discourse for education and professional biogeographers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reasons ecosystems should be restored are numerous, disparate, generally understated, and commonly underappreciated. We offer a typology in which these reasons—or motivations—are ordered among five rationales: technocratic, biotic, heuristic, idealistic, and pragmatic. The technocratic rationale encompasses restoration that is conducted by government agencies or other large organizations to satisfy specific institutional missions and mandates. The biotic rationale for restoration is to recover lost aspects of local biodiversity. The heuristic rationale attempts to elicit or demonstrate ecological principles and biotic expressions. The idealistic rationale consists of personal and cultural expressions of concern or atonement for environmental degradation, reengagement with nature, and/or spiritual fulfillment. The pragmatic rationale seeks to recover or repair ecosystems for their capacity to provide a broad array of natural services and products upon which human economies depend and to counteract extremes in climate caused by ecosystem loss. We propose that technocratic restoration, as currently conceived and practiced, is too narrow in scope and should be broadened to include the pragmatic rationale whose overarching importance is just beginning to be recognized. We suggest that technocratic restoration is too authoritarian, that idealistic restoration is overly restricted by lack of administrative strengths, and that a melding of the two approaches would benefit both. Three recent examples are given of restoration that blends the technocratic, idealistic, and pragmatic rationales and demonstrates the potential for a more unified approach. The biotic and heuristic rationales can be satisfied within the contexts of the other rationales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macroalgae drive the largest CO2 flux fixed globally by marine macrophytes. Most of the resulting biomass is exported through the coastal ocean as detritus and yet almost no field measurements have verified its potential net sequestration in marine sediments. This gap limits the scope for the inclusion of macroalgae within blue carbon schemes that support ocean carbon sequestration globally, and the understanding of the role their carbon plays within distal food webs. Here, we pursued three lines of evidence (eDNA sequencing, Bayesian Stable Isotope Mixing Modeling, and benthic‐pelagic process measurements) to generate needed, novel data addressing this gap. To this end, a 13‐month study was undertaken at a deep coastal sedimentary site in the English Channel, and the surrounding shoreline of Plymouth, UK. The eDNA sequencing indicated that detritus from most macroalgae in surrounding shores occurs within deep, coastal sediments, with detritus supply reflecting the seasonal ecology of individual species. Bayesian stable isotope mixing modeling [C and N] highlighted its vital role in supporting the deep coastal benthic food web (22–36% of diets), especially when other resources are seasonally low. The magnitude of detritus uptake within the food web and sediments varies seasonally, with an average net sedimentary organic macroalgal carbon sequestration of 8.75 g C·m−2·yr−1. The average net sequestration of particulate organic carbon in sediments is 58.74 g C·m−2·yr−1, the two rates corresponding to 4–5% and 26–37% of those associated with mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass beds, systems more readily identified as blue carbon habitats. These novel data provide important first estimates that help to contextualize the importance of macroalgal‐sedimentary connectivity for deep coastal food webs, and measured fluxes help constrain its role within global blue carbon that can support policy development. At a time when climate change mitigation is at the foreground of environmental policy development, embracing the full potential of the ocean in supporting climate regulation via CO2 sequestration is a necessity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The world conference (Conference of the Parties (COP23)) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change took place in Bonn (Germany) from 6 to 17 November. Speakers at the meeting stressed the severity of the threat from global warming and the urgent need to act but what commitments came out of the COP23 meeting? Alexandra Carrick gives a short summary of the meeting and some of the energy outcomes of the conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author responds to David Orr's article "Optimism and Hope in a Hotter Time," published within this issue of "Conservation Biology." While he enjoys Orr's talk of semantics, as well as his assumption of the interrelatedness of war with climactic change with consumer preferences, he feels the only real change to the world's "Petroleum Age" will occur when the cost of petroleum has forced economies to look for alternative energies. He feels that such a move would happen if oil were to reach a cost four times its price in 2007. He feels that a carbon tax would help spur such environmental policy changes.