• Full-cost accounting
• Multiple stakeholders
• Under Uncertainty

Conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in the face of uncertainty (Task 3.3)

Ecological systems are complex, self-organising adaptive systems characterised by historical dependency, complex dynamics and often by multiple basins of attraction. Human and ecological systems are coupled and co-evolve, i.e. human activities alter biodiversity and, in turn, biodiversity changes affect human well-being.

The challenge for long-term biodiversity conservation and sustainability is to understand the dynamics of coupled socio-ecological systems in order to predict how these dynamics might be affected by different social decisions. However, the very complexity of these systems means that it will be difficult to forecast the future. Surprises and uncertainty inherent in such dynamics make traditional approaches, which assume complete information, of little use. Therefore, long-term sustainable management of biodiversity resources requires novel approaches such as:

• stochastic dynamic programming
• management of resilience
• adaptive management
• multi-agent systems
• integrated environmental assessment modelling
• safe minimum standards
• the precautionary principle

Dealing with uncertainties in ecosystem behaviour under change also requires a careful estimation of the value of avoiding irreversible consequences. Whilst development of these methodologies is reasonably well advanced, a major challenge will be to formally integrate biodiversity within such frameworks.