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17/S1 (2008): 81–176
14.04.2008
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ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
000_Umschlag_96S
ÖKOLOGISCHE PERSPEKTIVEN FÜR
WISSENSCHAFT UND GESELLSCHAFT
ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES FOR
SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
S1 | 2008
W wie Wildnis wagen
Wildnis ist freie Natur – in ihrer Entwicklung uneingeschränkt und unberechenbar. Als Kontrast zur Zivilisationslandschaft brauchen wir solche Flächen, die sich
ohne Eingriffe des Menschen entwickeln und die »vor der Haustür« liegen, also
leicht erreichbar sind.
Dieses Handbuch verbindet erstmals wildnisbezogene Umweltbildung mit
planerischen wie rechtlichen Aspekten der Wildnisentwicklung in Mitteleuropa.
H. Zucchi, P. Stegmann (Hrsg.)
Wagnis Wildnis
Wildnisentwicklung und Wildnisbildung in Mitteleuropa
oekom verlag, München 2006
169 Seiten, 27,90 EUR, ISBN 3-936581-65-7
Große Schutzgebiete wie Biosphärenreservate, National-, Natur- und Landschaftsparks sollten lange Zeit vor allem die Natur schützen. Land- und Forstwirtschaft
etwa waren nicht vorgesehen und wurden möglichst eingeschränkt. Das war
früher. In jüngerer Zeit lautet das Ziel: Gebt Impulse für eine Regionalentwick–
lung, die ökonomische, ökologische und sozio-kulturelle Ziele verbindet!
T. Hammer (Hrsg.)
Großschutzgebiete
Instrumente nachhaltiger Entwicklung
oekom verlag, München 2003
198 Seiten, 24,50 EUR, ISBN 978-3-936581-19-5
Erhältlich bei
www.oekom.de
[email protected]
Fax +49/(0)81 91/970 00–405
r
SPECIAL ISSUE: PROTECTED AREAS AND BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION
G wie Großschutzgebiete
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SPECIAL ISSUE: PROTECTED AREAS AND
BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION
GAIA is available online at www.ingentaconnect.com
www.oekom.de | B 54649 | ISSN 0940-5550 |
GAIAEA 17/S1, 81–176 (2008)
Die guten Seiten der Zukunft
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Seite 107
107
Socio-Ecological Monitoring of
Biodiversity Change
Building upon the World Network of
Biosphere Reserves
Compared to the natural dimensions of
biodiversity conservation, its social dimensions get
little attention. The result: conflicts and bad environmental
management. A “Sustainability Geoscope”, however,
yields hope for improvement.
Socio-Ecological Monitoring of Biodiversity
Change – Building upon the World Network of
Biosphere Reserves
Hermann Lotze-Campen, Fritz Reusswig,
Susanne Stoll-Kleemann
Biodiversity Conservation: A Problem of
Uncertainty, Social Perception, and Environmental Management
GAIA 17/S1 (2008): 107–115
Abstract
We discuss biodiversity loss as a problem of social perception
and environmental management. Apart from the problems with
defining and measuring biodiversity, the impacts of biodiversity
loss on human well-being and lifestyles are difficult to assess, and
the value of biodiversity conservation is difficult to measure. The
biodiversity discourse is still dominated by the natural sciences,
whereas little attention has been paid to the social dimensions
and the social embedding of biodiversity conservation. This results
in biodiversity-related conflicts and bad environmental management. As a basis for improved management of biodiversity as a
global, yet locally nested common good, we define the requirements for an integrated socio-ecological monitoring system, a
“Sustainability Geoscope”. Through a large set of comparative,
interdisciplinary regional case studies a new quality of data integration and coverage at various spatial scales could be achieved.
We propose to choose the World Network of Biosphere Reserves
as an infrastructure of monitoring sites and discuss how such a
Geoscope could be implemented and related to existing initiatives.
The size of the human population and the intensity of its activities in the present time are so large and far-reaching that humanity now shapes environmental conditions on a global scale. The
accelerating loss of biological diversity in many world regions is
one of the key results of unsustainable human-nature interactions. Compared with other global changes, like climate change,
changes in nutrient cycles, and increasing freshwater scarcity,
the potential consequences of widespread biodiversity loss and
related changes in ecosystem services for human society are not
well understood.
Biodiversity as a scientific concept has been invented and propagated by biologists in the late 1980s (Wilson 1988, Haber 2008,
in this issue), and since then it has rapidly spread across scientific and policy language (Takacs 1996). According to Hannigan
(1995) three factors have contributed to this success story:
1. the growing economic importance of biotechnology,
2. the emergence of conservation biology as an academic
discipline in the late 1970s, and
3. the assembly of a political and legal infrastructure for
protecting biodiversity during the 1970s by the United
Nations and some non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Keywords
biodiversity management, biosphere reserves, comparative
regional case studies, global environmental change,
integrated monitoring, sustainability geoscope
Contact: Dr. Hermann Lotze-Campen | Potsdam Institute
for Climate Impact Research (PIK) | P. O. Box 60 12 03 |
14412 Potsdam | Germany | Tel.: +49 3312882699 |
E-Mail: [email protected]
GAIA 17/S1(2008): 107–115 | www.oekom.de/gaia
We would add that the growing acknowledgement of the role of
ecosystem services for human society provides an additional demand for the valuation of biological diversity (Daily 1997). All of
these factors resonate well with the intrinsically global dimension
of biodiversity: By adopting biodiversity as the framework of ref-
Dr. habil. Fritz Reusswig | Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research (PIK) | Germany | E-Mail: [email protected]
Prof. Dr. Susanne Stoll-Kleemann | Ernst Moritz Arndt University of
Greifswald | Germany | E-Mail: [email protected]
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Hermann Lotze-Campen, Fritz Reusswig, Susanne Stoll-Kleemann
erence for nature conservation, a global bias is intrinsically built
into our perceptions of place-based nature and local conditions.
In our implicit assessments and judgements, we have to perceive
a single species or habitat against its overall situation across the
globe – only then the degree of endangerment and the related
threat to biodiversity will become clear (Flitner 1998).
Biodiversity (the diversity of genes, species and/or habitats,
see Haber 2008, in this issue) is intricately related to human perceptions of the earth’s biosphere and human activities affecting
it on local to global scales. The “value” assigned to a certain species (or habitat) by different social groups differs widely, depending on the perceived direct or indirect use. While it may be intuitively clear that large-scale loss of biodiversity is unsustainable,
it is hard to define “optimal” levels of diversity, or at least minimum levels to be maintained. Despite the uncertainty about the
exact value of biodiversity to human society, most people have
strong opinions about how the landscape they live in should look
like, which is obviously related to species and habitat diversity
within this landscape (see Haber 2008, in this issue). Given this
uncertainty, the precautionary principle suggests that biodiversity conservation efforts should aim at rather ambitious targets,
until we gain a better understanding of the most relevant interactions between humans and nature. Moreover, since human and
natural systems are constantly evolving, “conservation” should
not be seen as a static concept, but rather one with moving targets which need to be continuously reviewed and adapted.
The Social Dimension of Biodiversity
Given the complexity and insufficient understanding of the links
between society and nature, little attention has been paid to the
social perception of biodiversity and the social embedding of its
conservation and management. The biodiversity discourse is still
dominated by the natural sciences, with few examples, where an
integrated socio-ecological research approach has been pursued
(e. g., Forester and Machlis 1996, Rosa 1999, White et al. forthcoming).
There are many direct human drivers for biodiversity loss, such
as land use and habitat change, invasive species, overuse, pollution (mainly nitrogen and phosphorus), and, more recently, climate change. Underlying causes for these direct drivers can also
be identified, and of course they vary across regions: resource
scarcity leading to an increase in the pressure of production on
resources, changing opportunities created by markets, outside
policy intervention, loss of adaptive capacity and increased vulnerability, and changes in social organisation, in resource access,
and in attitudes (Lambin et al. 2003, Ohl et al. 2007).Many of these
direct and underlying drivers arise from and/or create biodiversity conflicts. Biodiversity conflicts are social interactions between
at least two actors (individual or corporate) with different interests and/or worldviews, including values, risk assessments, and
aesthetic preferences – and often endowed with heterogeneous
sets of (natural) resources. Biodiversity conflicts may arise if natural resources (such as land or the flow of ecosystem services)
are scarce, and alternative uses by different actors are envisioned.
A classical example is the conflict between nature conservation
in protected areas and various other kinds of human use. Nature
conservation is a human use in a wider sense, it has supporters
in the social system (e. g., NGOs or state agencies), and it usually implies a specific social discourse (e. g., conservation science)
in order to justify it. The conflict between conservation and use
thus is a social conflict as well. Conflicts may also arise if externalities from the resource use of one actor affect others, such as
downstream biodiversity loss due to upstream activities like industry or fishing. Managing biodiversity conservation to a large
extent means managing biodiversity-related conflicts.
Biological diversity is of course not confined to protected areas. Biologists have identified 25 so-called biodiversity hotspots
(figure 1) that are especially rich in endemic species and particularly threatened by human activities (Myers et al. 2000).However,
the socio-economic dynamics of these areas are not well understood and quantified. Cincotta et al. (2000) suggest that population growth together with expected changes in human lifestyles
and consumption patterns are likely to induce continuous, and
probably increasing, environmental pressure on natural resources
within the biodiversity hotspots. In addition to direct interactions
between the local resident population and their environment, interactions with non-residents (e. g., visitors, logging and mining
companies, food processing firms) will become increasingly important (Stedman-Edwards 1997). The same argument could be
extended to areas that are not particularly species-rich (i. e., hotspots), but are nevertheless considered “valuable” by human society for various reasons.
Biodiversity conflicts are thus very likely to intensify in the future – in protected as well as non-protected areas. In most cases
we are failing to solve these conflicts on various relevant levels
and therefore to establish efficient modes of conservation or sustainable use of biodiversity (Singh 2002). These failures are due
to the fact that in biodiversity management certain components
of the social system, such as institutional factors, are not sufficiently taken into account (Stoll-Kleemann 2005). Improved management, however, crucially depends on improved methods of
monitoring, modelling, and assessment.
The Challenge of Biodiversity Monitoring
A major current problem with biodiversity monitoring is the general data scarcity and availability on the level of protected areas
including biosphere reserves (Bertzky and Stoll-Kleemann 2008).
Protected areas and biosphere reserves play an important role for
biodiversity conservation and for achieving the implementation
of ambitious multilateral environmental agreements, like the 2010
targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). For example at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 in Johannesburg, 190 countries agreed to a process of “(…) achieving
by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity
loss at the global, regional, and national level (…)” (UNEP 2002,
p. 319). A further example is the so-called Programme of Work on
Protected Areas (PoW) adopted at the 7 th Conference of the Parties
of the CBD in 2004. One of its main elements refers to measures
www.oekom.de/gaia | GAIA 17/S1(2008): 107–115
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SPECIAL ISSUE: PROTECTED AREAS
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13.04.2008
FIGURE 1: World population density, biodiversity hotspots, and the location of biosphere reserves. Sources: CIESIN (2007), Cincotta et al. (2000), UNESCO MAB (2007).
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Hermann Lotze-Campen, Fritz Reusswig, Susanne Stoll-Kleemann
to “implement management effectiveness evaluations of at least
30 percent of each party’s protected areas by 2010 and of national protected area systems and, as appropriate, ecological networks”
(CBD 2005, p. 1279).
The need for improved biodiversity monitoring, especially of
the social and cultural dimensions, with a focus on human-nature interactions, has recently been expressed by key stakeholders in the preparation of the World Congress on Biosphere Reserves
by the UNESCO MAB (Man and Biosphere) Programme 1 in 2008
(UNESCO MAB 2008b).2 Under the Seville Strategy for Biosphere
Reserves 3, reserves are to become pilot sites for the integration
of nature conservation efforts with strategies for sustainable resource use and development. At theWorld Congress 2008, international experts and the MAB constituency have worked together
to analyse the results of the implementation of the Seville Strategy. They have assessed the progress made and address future
challenges for biosphere reserves with the goal of adopting the
Madrid Action Plan (2008 – 2013) (UNESCO MAB 2008 b).
The Need for an Improved Knowledge Base:
A Sustainability Geoscope
From the notion of different perceptions of biodiversity, the increasing intensity of biodiversity-related conflicts, and the request
for more appropriate monitoring and management of biodiversity by important institutional stakeholders follows the need for
an improved knowledge base. Four elements of such a knowledge
base can be named:
1. a sound theoretical framework which explains the causes for
ongoing changes and observed trends,
2. systematic long-term observations of key variables describing
human-nature interactions,
3. appropriate models and methods for comprehensive analyses
of past developments and the development of future scenarios and options, and
4. an institutional stakeholder interface in order to update the
knowledge base on practical terms and to disseminate results
for decision-making needs and formats.
The main focus of this knowledge base should be on humannature interactions, not on natural or social processes in separation. This implies a substantial change in the epistemological
framing of monitoring (in line with Rosa 1999).
Existing disciplinary and domain-specific monitoring activities are useful and important. But they must be seen as supportive contributions to a new research domain inspired by a radical-
1 www.unesco.org/mab
2 Personal communication of Susanne Stoll-Kleemann with UNESCO MAB
National Committee members and biosphere reserve coordinators at the
World Congress on Biosphere Reserves in Madrid, February 4–9, 2008.
3 www.unesco.org/mab/Strategy.pdf
ly different perspective: socio-ecological interactions as the key
aspect of global environmental change. A database with time series on socio-ecological interactions, like for example biodiversity changes, resource-use changes, or institutional changes, will
support the development of new theories and improved models for explaining relevant causal relationships. Eventually, improved databases will be used to generate more adequate future
scenarios, targets, and options for biodiversity conservation.
One of the key challenges is to link the global and local perspectives of the problem. It is well acknowledged that the richness of genetic and species diversity of the whole planet depends
on local conditions. A specific local situation cannot be understood nor effectively influenced without taking global processes
into account. Hence, the specific knowledge gained from local
and regional case studies has to be integrated with more synoptic views from the global perspective. In principle, this can be done
as recommended by Agrawal (2001) in the context of improved
natural resources management. He suggests to “deploy theoretically motivated comparative case analyses to identify the most
important causal mechanisms and narrow the range of relevant
theoretical variables and their interactions”, but on the other hand
“to conduct large-N (i. e., a large number of, H. L.-C. et al.) studies to identify the strength of causal relations” (Agrawal 2001,
p. 1662).
By stressing the need for a theoretical framework for monitoring we do not assume any paradigmatic consistency. We are
well aware of the variability of approaches and schools of thought
– not only within the social, but also within the natural sciences.
Our main point is to highlight the need for a theoretical discourse
and a theoretically informed choice of monitoring schemes.
A concept for a global monitoring and observation system
with a broad coverage of environmental and socio-economic
processes has been proposed under the label “Sustainability Geoscope” (Lotze-Campen et al. 2002, Lucht and Pachauri 2004,
Lotze-Campen et al. forthcoming). The Geoscope vision aims at
an instrument for systematic collection and analysis of compatible natural-scientific and socio-economic data that enable a validation of integrated views of society-nature dynamics. In brief,
a Geoscope has to be:
interdisciplinary and integrated in terms of thematic
coverage,
multi-scale with a nested structure ranging from local to
global scales,
comparative and systematic in terms of linking across
sites, scales, and issues,
spatially explicit with regard to information gathering and
analysis,
long-term, continuous, and flexible in its organisational
and funding structure, and
based on and closely linked to existing monitoring efforts
in various domains.
Within the Geoscope concept we define the term “monitoring”
not in the narrow sense of just observation and data collection.
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Such a monitoring system will focus on human actions (individual, collective, political) and inter-linkages with changing environmental conditions. The system will evolve and adjust to changing requirements over time through repeated feedback loops
through theory, modelling and observation, reflecting a social
process of learning from failures and success stories.
In order to facilitate a well-structured monitoring process, a
sufficiently large set of comparative regional case studies has to
be defined which covers the global hotspots of human-nature
interactions. Within these sample regions a common protocol
for empirical research has to be established with a focus on key
actors (Who are they? What are their intentions and constraints?
What are the consequences of their actions, and what mechanisms and patterns can be identified among different regions?).
For the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 in
Johannesburg five focus areas were defined: Water, Energy, Health,
Agriculture, Biodiversity (WEHAB). The relevance of the Geoscope concept for sustainable use of water resources has been discussed in an earlier paper (Lotze-Campen et al. 2002). Figure 2
describes a possible structure of such a comprehensive monitoring system, putting the issue of biodiversity change along other
important socio-ecological issues, for example resource use, socio-economic change, institutional change, and value change.
At the ground level, a Geoscope consists of specific case studies
or regional nodes, where various thematic issues are investigated using a wide range of methods (primary data collection, longterm socio-ecological experiments, socio-ecological modelling,
social surveys, stakeholder participation), which are applied to the
same regional context. All continents should be covered by several case studies. While most social and environmental hotspots
should be covered, preferably in the same location, each sample
region or case study will obviously only cover a limited set of
themes and methods. Each case should, however, cover at least
two of the proposed thematic issues in order to assure integrative
and comparative research. Multi-scale relations have to be explicitly addressed, as “place matters, but scale decides” (Swyngedouw 1997, p. 144).
At the second level, thematic nodes will focus on important issues or a certain research methodology. These will be applied and
analysed across various regional contexts in a comparative manner. For practical reasons of implementation, in the initial phase
thematic areas of investigation may be restricted to selected topics, which may grow over time. This structure will assure thematic integration and comparison at the regional level and, simultaneously, regional integration and comparison at the thematic
level. For our focus on biodiversity monitoring this design principle implies that for example certain socio-economic survey techniques can be applied across a large number of sample sites on
a global scale. At the same time, the specific local connections
between biodiversity management and aspects of values and behaviour, resource use and institutional settings can be explored
separately in an integrated way at selected research sites. We
propose to classify thematic nodes under five headings:
1. biodiversity change (e. g., species diversity, landscape
diversity),
2. resource-use change (e. g., land, water, energy, minerals,
emissions, waste),
3. socio-economic change (e. g., population, health, income,
education),
4. institutional change (e. g., property rights, law enforcement,
corruption), and
5. value change (e. g., perceptions, attitudes, expectations).
FIGURE 2: Exemplary structure of a Geoscope prototype for conducting comparative regional case
studies on a global scale (names of regional nodes/case studies are for illustration only).
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FORSCHUNG | RESEARCH
At the top level, synthesis nodes will serve
various purposes of the system. Research
at the global level will provide a joint database infrastructure, conduct global modelling activities, and integrate results across
issues and scales. A public discourse has
to be organised to design research strategies and communicate results. Ultimately,
continuous information streams generated by the monitoring system will be fed into the policy process and the discourses.
From continuous monitoring it should
be possible to identify patterns of sustainable human-nature interactions which may
be even transferable across cases. These results can be linked to existing simulation
models on different scales, to allow for
generalisation and comparison across the
globe. This will in turn create the demand
for even more advanced, operational methods of monitoring and observation with
global coverage over extended time periods.
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A major challenge will be the connection of global models with
inter-linked regional case studies. There are good examples of
how to generate synoptic views from large numbers of unconnected case studies (Lambin et al. 2003, MacEachren et al. 2006,
Petschel-Held et al. 1999, Wood et al. 2000). Methods for case
study integration and synthesis range from descriptive statistical
methods (e. g., Lambin et al. 2003) to more analytical tools based
on qualitative mathematical models (e. g., Petschel-Held et al.
1999). With the exception of Wood et al. (2000), the available independent case studies were not deliberately set up for systematic comparison or large-scale information synthesis. They were also not meant to be repeated over time in a comparable manner.
In the proposed Geoscope concept the case study protocols
from the very beginning would be designed in a way to facilitate
comparisons and synoptic analyses across space and time. Within the proposed infrastructure it will be possible to integrate data
generation methods across various scales and disciplines. These
will range from information with global coverage (like satellite
remote sensing data) to national statistics (like economic development measures and political conditions) and local information
(like household surveys, point measures from weather stations,
or community statistics). The reference point for most of this information will be a spatial grid. Methods, however, have to be developed to link spatially explicit information with information on
social actors, such as households, where the assignment of specific locations may be ambiguous.
A Geoscope would in principle serve two different tasks. First,
it has to generate raw data and a research infrastructure for integrated scientific analysis of global change processes (including
theory-building, modelling, and scenario development) and, second, it has to support the public discourse and political decision
processes (communication of results through simplified and aggregated representations, and feeding into decision support
tools).
Obviously, such a system has to be built upon existing efforts
in various disciplines. In the area of biodiversity research and monitoring, a number of databases and research networks already exist, which can be used to develop a monitoring system with more
socio-economic coverage. These existing structures in biodiversity research may serve as a prototype and core for a thematically
more comprehensive sustainability monitoring system.
in this initiative (GEO 2008). This will be partly based on the existing Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), which
strives to digitise and disseminate already available primary biodiversity data from different sources on a global scale.5 So far,
however, all of these initiatives lack a strong element in the socio-economic and institutional domains, as these are not easily
covered by remote sensing devices. Usually the focus is on the
potential of observation technology, but not on “soft” methods
from the social sciences, which are equally important for making social use of the obtained information.6 Bertzky and StollKleemann (2008) discuss shortcomings of existing data sources
in more detail. Wood et al. (2000) is the only study available to
us that examined the root causes of biodiversity on a global scale
by applying the same research methodology to ten case studies
around the world. This work points exactly into the direction we
are envisioning.
Biosphere Reserves as a Starting Point for the
Geoscope
Monitoring Sites for the Implementation of the Geoscope
Concept
Only two existing global networks, however, are based on regional sites: the World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR) and
the International Long-Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER) 7. In search of an initial set of monitoring sites for implementing the Geoscope concept, we suggest to focus on the WNBR.
There are currently 531 biosphere reserves in 105 countries, well
spread across the globe (as of March 2008, see UNESCO MAB
2008 a). They suitably combine protected core areas with surrounding buffer zones and “transition areas” under human use
(Stoll-Kleemann and Job 2008, in this issue).
While currently much of the valuable information from biosphere reserves is either not systematically collected, or not reported, or not comparable across sites (Price 2002), some promising initiatives have emerged. The monitoring platform BRIM
(Biosphere Reserve Integrated Monitoring) operates within WNBR
and provides abiotic, biological, socio-economic, and integrated
information. In this context, within the UNESCO MAB Biosphere
Reserves Directory 8 one can perform queries by research and monitoring activities, either by a free search or by using predefined lists
for biodiversity and socio-economic monitoring. To facilitate this
work in conjunction with the establishment and maintenance of
long-term biodiversity monitoring plots,MAB developed and implemented BioMon, the Biodiversity Monitoring Database. BioMon
presents analysis and documentation of data in a standardised
format. It has been widely distributed throughout an international network of nearly 300 biodiversity monitoring sites. Further-
A key characteristic of a Sustainability Geoscope as outlined above
is the combination of an infrastructure of well-defined regional
sites with a global research focus and coverage. There are already
a number of global monitoring initiatives in place, especially on
the basis of satellite remote sensing.4 The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), launched in 2006, aims at harmonising earth observation data from various sources, and a
Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) is also foreseen
4 For example Global Terrestrial Observation System (GTOS), Global Climate
Observation System (GCOS), Global Ocean Observation System (GOOS),
Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES).
5 www.gbif.org
6 See for example a recent thematic focus on earth monitoring in
Nature 450/7171 (2007): 761–920.
7 www.ilternet.edu
8 www.unesco.org/mabdb/br/brdir/directory/database.asp
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more, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre also offers a
useful database. Detailed biological data concerning individual
sites also can be found at the databases of large nature conservation NGOs, for example The World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF),
Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy.
Despite these efforts, serious shortcomings prevail in the existing monitoring systems of protected areas and biosphere reserves (Price 2002, Bertzky and Stoll-Kleemann 2008). The welldesigned periodic review process of UNESCO MAB itself suffers
from a very low response rate. This is due to a number of reasons,
for example the lack of indicators and mechanisms to review effectiveness in biosphere reserves. Methods to monitor and assess
societal value changes and institutional settings are still under
construction. Up to now BRIM still suffers from a lack of efforts
at the social science side. Only about ten percent of all biosphere
reserves perform any form of social monitoring, and most of it
is not done on a regular and comparative basis. MAB has recognised this being a severe problem, especially under the auspices
of the Seville Strategy, declaring the integration of conservation
and sustainable development a major policy goal for biosphere
reserves. A pilot phase for social monitoring as part of an integrated monitoring system has been established (Lass and Reusswig 2001), but due to lacking resources no substantial results are
available so far. Nevertheless, this could become an important
starting point for implementing the Geoscope concept presented here, if sufficient funding could be raised.
ILTER is a second global network based on (mostly) small research sites, which carry out long-term observations and research
on key ecological processes and biodiversity. A process has started to integrate social science research into the LTER 9 agenda,
which is mainly driven by the European network of excellence
ALTERNET 10. Two of the main purposes of ALTERNET are to
enlarge the biodiversity research agenda towards Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER, see Haberl et al. 2006), and to
establish a site-based infrastructure for continuous integrated
biodiversity research under the name of LIFE WATCH11. As many
LTER sites are located in biosphere reserves, the emerging LTSER
efforts and the LIFE WATCH infrastructure can be easily linked
with WNBR. There are also connections to the US National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)12.
The value-added potential from comparative, systematic, longterm information flows compared to isolated case studies is obvious. This is the precondition for operational large-scale databases on biodiversity loss and the assessment of conservation efforts
(Bertzky and Stoll-Kleemann 2008). To highlight the scientific
necessity and technical feasibility of a Sustainability Geoscope,
however, is not sufficient. It has to be embedded in the social and
9 Long Term Ecological Research Network, see www.lternet.edu.
10 A Long-Term Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Awareness Research Network,
see www.alter-net.info.
11 www.lifewatch.eu
12 www.neoninc.org
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Biosphere reserves provide
excellent cases for studying
the interdependence of social and
ecological processes.
organisational reality of science-policy interface organisations.
Several challenges for implementation prevail (see box, p. 114).
Existing attempts, such as the UNESCO MAB or the CBD processes, can help to serve as paradigmatic implementation spaces
for the idea of social monitoring in integrated contexts.
Conclusions
The fact that more than 500 globally distributed biosphere reserves are seeking to focus on human-nature interactions and
to reconcile human use with nature conservation makes them
a suitable pilot sample for a Sustainability Geoscope. The fact,
however, that they are not yet covered by an integrative monitoring system means that valuable insight is being lost.
If biodiversity is seen as a locally nested global problem of
environmental management, the global conservation of biodiversity is a challenge both for global and for local levels. The task is
to link and frame local problems:
“Arguably, for example, the conservation of biodiversity might
best be understood not as a single overarching global problem
requiring uniform global rules, norms, and approaches, but
rather as a series of thematically linked regional ecosystem-scale
problems, requiring regional solutions and regional governance
models” (Karkkainen 2002, p. 214).
Of course those regional solutions will have to be nested in
more global ones, including common protocols, standards, assessment tools, legislative frameworks, monitoring and management. A “co-ordinated global network of regional efforts” (Karkkainen 2002, p. 215) would be a perfect example for the “glocal”
nature that the concept of biodiversity has brought about.
Informed management decisions and conflict resolution
across different scales require an improved information base. In
the case of biodiversity, information has to be integrated across
a wide range of disciplines, especially with a stronger focus on
economic, sociological, and psychological aspects. If the problem
is de facto “bad management”, we need to monitor real-world
human-nature interactions in the light of possible sustainable
futures and better management options.
The Sustainability Geoscope concept links an infrastructure
of systematic, long-term, comparative, regional case studies to
large-scale global research, social discourses, and political processes. It would contribute to the necessary integration of ecological and socio-economic theories, methods, and observations. It
would not only produce valuable and policy-informing results,
but also deliver an innovative and timely methodological ap-
>
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BOX:
Seite 114
Hermann Lotze-Campen, Fritz Reusswig, Susanne Stoll-Kleemann
Challenges for Implementation of
a Global Monitoring System
1. Policy goals: A pure monitoring system, generating additional data
sets, will hardly generate interest and resources. Data seem abundant, intelligent information processing and interpretation is lacking.
Making the plea for additional monitoring systems more pertinent
requires clear cut relations to policy goals in a broader sense. Here,
the international mandate of the CBD does offer a clear “hook” for a
global monitoring scheme. Other policy goals, such as the EU’s goal
of halting biodiversity loss by 2010 or national goals can play an important role as well.
2. Scientific relevance: Scientists have split attitudes towards data
generating systems: they provide the basis for scientific work, but at
the same time data collection and management do not yield much
academic merit. In order to make a monitoring system an interesting tool for scientists it is required to establish the transfer of research
questions and researchers to the monitoring process.
3. Finance: The lack of resources is the main reason that for instance
BRIM has not yet really taken off. But some existing earth observation systems based on satellite remote sensing are very expensive.
More integrated monitoring requires a substantial shift of financial
resources from “hard” technology-based observation methods towards “soft” methods like social surveys, focus groups, and interactive planning exercises. Social monitoring is cheap compared to
satellite observation, but most decision makers regard it as expensive due to a lack of perceived relevance and/or value-added.
4. Organisational structure: A site-based global monitoring system
will have to be organised by linking existing national or regional networks to a central coordination unit. This is the way taken by both
WNBR and ILTER. This will ensure that existing networks and initiatives can bring in most of their infrastructure and experience, and it
will facilitate the mobilisation of national research funds. Of course,
without sufficient authority of a coordination unit, the monitoring network may remain weak and disorganised. National MAB Committees
and Regional Networks (e. g., EUROMAB, AFRIMAB, IBEROMAB )
together with UNESCO Regional Offices and national research institutions will be important players in this process.
5. Indicators: One of the biggest challenges for a sustainability monitoring system is to reduce the complexity of the observed processes
and the collected information. This can be achieved by selecting a
suitable set of indicators to describe the key features of the observed
socio-ecological systems. Suitable indicators should be grounded in
theoretically sound concepts. A pragmatic approach to the choice of
indicators would be to start with a currently accepted set of indicators, compiled from various disciplinary backgrounds, like the United
Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) indicator
set (UN 2001). Through the proposed cycle of continuous data collection, integrated analysis and theory-building within the proposed
system, the initial indicator set could be gradually improved.
6. Social discourse: Implementing a monitoring system is not only
a question of physical and observation devices. It is about starting
a discourse as well. Discourses are public debates about facts, beliefs and norms, embedded in a political and cultural context, and
related to preferences and constraints of actors. Important participants in discourses on global change issues are, apart from the scientists, decision makers in politics and the business world as well
as stakeholders from civil society (e. g., NGOs). Facts gain (or lose)
credibility and meaning only by social discourses. And only by discourses get values related to the factual world.
proach, which could gradually widen its scope towards broader
issues of sustainable development, such as natural resource use,
socio-economic dynamics, institutional settings, and personal
values.
Many existing knowledge gaps with regard to socio-ecological processes and interactions are not necessarily due to missing
information, but rather due to data incompatibilities between
different sources and approaches. The big challenge here is to
join forces across different research and monitoring communities (remote sensing, official statistics, point measurements) and
overcome the prevailing thematic, spatial, and temporal scale
mismatches between already existing data.
Biosphere reserves with their systematic connection and nested structure of different levels of human interference with ecosystems provide excellent cases for studying the interdependence
of social and ecological processes. WNBR and BRIM provide an
already existing infrastructure for socio-ecological research and
monitoring activities. Next steps towards the implementation of
the presented monitoring concept include the establishment of
a powerful alliance of interested partners and the acquisition of
seed funding. The 9 th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the
CBD (COP-9) in May 2008 in Germany provides a unique opportunity to continue this process. The authors not only have a large
personal network among the COP-9 participants, they are also
involved in several upcoming funding opportunities. The LIFE
WATCH initiative will be proposed for funding under theEU 7 th
Framework Programme. Existing personal ties with NEON in the
United States will be used to revive the BRIM process and to develop joint projects in biodiversity research, to be funded by national agencies, for example in Germany.
The basic idea and inital concepts for a Sustainability Geoscope were
developed in a series of workshops organised by the German National Committee for Global Change Research (Nationales Kommittee für Global Change
Forschung, NKGCF) in 2001/2002. Financial support by NKGCF for parts of
our research is gratefully acknowledged. Wolfgang Lucht, Carlo Jaeger and
Marina Fischer-Kowalski made important contributions and shaped the
process at an early stage.
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Submitted July 25, 2007; revised version
accepted March 19, 2008.
Hermann Lotze-Campen
Born 1966 in Norden, Germany. Studies in agricultural
sciences and agricultural economics in Kiel (Germany),
Reading (UK) and Minneapolis/St. Paul (Minnesota, USA).
PhD in agricultural economics from Humboldt University
of Berlin. Since 2001 Senior Researcher at the Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research, Research Domain Earth System
Analysis. Main areas of work: climate change and agriculture,
modelling of global land use change, sustainability monitoring.
Friedrich (Fritz) Alexander Reusswig
Born 1958 in Hasselroth, Germany. Studies in
sociology and philosophy, as well as PhD in philosophy,
in Frankfurt on the Main. Since 1995 Senior Researcher at
the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
2006 Habilitation “Consuming Nature” from Potsdam
University. Main areas of work: lifestyle and consumption issues as
drivers for global environmental change, especially climate change.
Susanne Stoll-Kleemann
Born 1969 in Weinheim, Germany. 1999 PhD from TU Berlin.
Since 2008 Professor and Chair of Sustainability Science
and Applied Geography at the Ernst Moritz Arndt
University of Greifswald. Leader of the GoBi (Governance of
Biodiversity) research group. Previously positions at
Humboldt University of Berlin, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich.
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