Incorporating Biodiversity into IPCC Assessment

DÍAZ, S

Buenos Aires

Taller; IPCC Panel Expert Meeting on the Science Related to UNFCCC Article 2 Including Key Vulnerabilities; 2004

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - United Nations

Four points are crucial in the incorporation of biodiversity in the assessment of ecosystem vulnerability to global change 1. Consider biodiversity not only as a response variable vulnerable to global change, but also as an intervening factor that affects ecosysterm processes and services, and therefore can influence ecosystem vulnerability to global change. 2. Consider the combined, non-linear effects of more than one global change driver (e.g. climate plus land-use changes). these are likely to have the most dramatic and immediate effects on biodiversity and ecosystem processes. How to consider them? By increasing study cases and modelling them more explicitly. 3. Consider that there is more to biodiversity than species numbers. Preserving the integrity of communities in terms of species number, composition, and interactions, rather than simply maximizing species numbers, is more likely to maintain ecosystem services and to decrease ecosystem vulnerability. 4. Large-scale homogenezation of vegetation are likely to have impacts on ecosystem services and processes at least as important as (and likely more important than) the impacts of global extinctions.