Peer-reviewed publications

In a marine environment that is rapidly changing due to anthropogenic activities and climate change, area-based management tools are often used to mitigate threats and conserve biodiversity. Marine protected areas (MPAs) are amongst the most widespread and recognized marine conservation tools worldwide, however, MPAs alone are inadequate to address the environmental crisis. The promotion of other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) under draft Target 3 of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, i.e., conserving 30% of marine areas by 2030, holds promise to acknowledge sites and practices occurring beyond MPAs that contribute to conservation. Here, we evaluate the potential recognition of OECMs into Indonesia's national policy framework on marine resource management and provide the first-ever overview of distribution and types of potential marine OECMs in Indonesia, including a review of the existing evidence on conservation effectiveness. We identified > 390 potential marine OECMs, led by government, customary and local communities, or the private sector, towards diverse management objectives, including habitat protection, traditional/customary management, fisheries, tourism, or other purposes. While some evidence exists regarding the conservation effectiveness of these practices, the long-term impacts on biodiversity of all potential marine OECMs in Indonesia are unknown. Many OECM elements have been included in several national policies, yet there are no established mechanisms to identify, recognize and report sites as OECMs in Indonesia. We propose four transformational strategies for future OECM recognition in Indonesia, namely: (i) safeguard customary and traditional communities, (ii) leverage cross-sector and cross-scale collaboration, (iii) focus on delivering outcomes, and (iv) streamline legal frameworks. Our study shows that OECMs have the potential to play a significant role in underpinning marine area-based conservation in Indonesia, including supporting the Government of Indonesia in reaching national and international conservation targets and goals.

Widespread, common species continue to decline, disrupting ecosystems and human connections with nature. New strategies to motivate people to protect widespread species are needed. Drawing on a relational values framework, we deploy a discrete choice experiment survey (n = 646) to test whether foregrounding the genetic distinctiveness of local populations and interdependence with humans could motivate conservation of a widespread species (rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss). Genetic/genomic data have long been used to manage endangered species, but have heretofore not been used to motivate public support for conservation of widespread species. Fitting our survey data to a mixed multinomial logit model, we find that when we emphasize participants' interdependent relationships with fish, participants are willing to pay significantly more to support conservation projects that protect genetically distinct populations. These findings suggest a new avenue for using an abundant resource (genetic data) to motivate conservation of widespread species.

Production rate of oil palm has been increased in Indonesia to meet the high demand of products. In response, companies and smallholders have improved their production through expansions. In 2018, plantation occupied a land mass of 3.4 million hectares, leading to environmental, social, and economic problems. The aims of study were to analyze the rationality responsible for the encroachment chaos in forest areas, to analyze the correlation between readiness to implement ISPO and the logic responsible for smallholders’ classification, and to analyze related issues in ISPO implementation. Survey method with questionnaires was used on plasma smallholders managing independent plantations in two villages at East Kalimantan. The results showed rules guiding forest encroachment cover the activities of Smallholders with effective and substantive rationality. However, many of them are not ready to implement ISPO certification because their marketing activities are controlled by middlemen. Therefore, forest area encroachment will remain and ISPO certification will be difficult to implement.

The purpose of this study was to assess the amounts of land, water, energy in fuels, and wild fish for fishmeal and fish oil in feeds required per tonne of harvested, farmed shrimp in five countries producing most of the shrimp destined for the international market. Land use for whiteleg shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei production differed slightly between Indonesia (0.37 ha/t shrimp) and the other four, major shrimp exporting countries – Ecuador, India, Thailand, and Vietnam (0.42–0.46 ha/t shrimp). Total water use was greater in Ecuador (76,800 m3/t) and Indonesia (55,000 m3/t) than in the other three countries (14,000–45,500 m3/t), but most water was saline. Freshwater use was mainly embodied in feed, did not differ among countries, and averaged 6.3% of total water use. Energy use ranged from 56.0 GJ/t (Ecuador) to 98.8 GJ/t (Thailand). All Asian countries had energy use above 75 GJ/t. Wild fish use for fishmeal and fish oil in feeds was greatest in Ecuador (0.891 t/t) and similar in Asian countries (0.612–0.670 t/t). In terms of edible crude protein, whiteleg shrimp was similar to broiler chickens, but more efficient than pigs and beef cattle in land and freshwater use, but greater in energy use than were the three terrestrial meat sources. Compared to L. vannamei, black tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon required more land, a greater amount of water, but less energy per tonne of shrimp. Although comparatively small differences in average uses of these primary resources were found among countries, the large variation which was noted among farms in each country suggests that resource use could be improved considerably.

Conservation technology holds the potential to vastly increase conservationists’ ability to understand and address critical environmental challenges, but systemic constraints appear to hamper its development and adoption. Understanding of these constraints and opportunities for advancement remains limited. We conducted a global online survey of 248 conservation technology users and developers to identify perceptions of existing tools’ current performance and potential impact, user and developer constraints, and key opportunities for growth. We also conducted focus groups with 45 leading experts to triangulate findings. The technologies with the highest perceived potential were machine learning and computer vision, eDNA and genomics, and networked sensors. Ninety-five percent, 94%, and 92% of respondents, respectively, rated them as very helpful or game changers. The most pressing challenges affecting the field as a whole were competition for limited funding, duplication of efforts, and inadequate capacity building. Seventy-six percent, 67%, and 55% of respondents, respectively, identified these as primary concerns. The key opportunities for growth identified in focus groups were increasing collaboration and information sharing, improving the interoperability of tools, and enhancing capacity for data analyses at scale. Some constraints appeared to disproportionately affect marginalized groups. Respondents in countries with developing economies were more likely to report being constrained by upfront costs, maintenance costs, and development funding (p = 0.048, odds ratio [OR] = 2.78; p = 0.005, OR = 4.23; p = 0.024, OR = 4.26), and female respondents were more likely to report being constrained by development funding and perceived technical skills (p = 0.027, OR = 3.98; p = 0.048, OR = 2.33). To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to formally capture the perspectives and needs of the global conservation technology community, providing foundational data that can serve as a benchmark to measure progress. We see tremendous potential for this community to further the vision they define, in which collaboration trumps competition; solutions are open, accessible, and interoperable; and user-friendly processing tools empower the rapid translation of data into conservation action.

The growth of the global and domestic trade in agricultural and forest (primarily timber) commodities over the past decade has driven an expansion of their production, a significant portion of which takes place in tropical lands. This is leading to a significant increase in environmental impacts that are linked to deforestation and forest fragmentation, biodiversity loss and rising carbon emissions. Negative social impacts are also increasing; they include threats to local food and nutrition security, and to the tenure rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Positive impacts include support for the livelihoods of the smallholder farmers who depend on commodity crops

Wyborn and Evans1 argue that global priority maps for conservation have questionable utility and may crowd out local and more contextual research. While we agree with the authors’ central argument that effective and equitable conservation must be rooted at local scales, the assertion that “conservation needs to break free from global priority mapping” presents a false dichotomy. We should not think in terms of a binary choice of methods (local or global), but rather recognize that information across scales will have the most relevance and power in the future. Wyborn and Evans challenge the creators of global maps to identify their theory of change. Here, we outline six major areas of contribution relevant for priority setting and other conservation-related decisions.

Dams, reservoirs, and other water management infrastructure provide benefits, but can also have negative impacts. Dam construction and removal affects progress toward the UN sustainable development goals at local to global scales. Yet, globally-consistent information on the location and characteristics of these structures are lacking, with information often highly localised, fragmented, or inaccessible. A freely available, curated, consistent, and regularly updated global database of existing dams and other instream infrastructure is needed along with open access tools to support research, decision-making and management needs. Here we introduce the Global Dam Watch (GDW) initiative (www.globaldamwatch.org) whose objectives are: (a) advancing recent efforts to develop a single, globally consistent dam and instream barrier data product for global-scale analyses (the GDW database); (b) bringing together the increasingly numerous global, regional and local dam and instream barrier datasets in a directory of databases (the GDW directory); (c) building tools for the visualisation of dam and instream barrier data and for analyses in support of policy and decision making (the GDW knowledge-base) and (d) advancing earth observation and geographical information system techniques to map a wider range of instream structures and their properties. Our focus is on all types of anthropogenic instream barriers, though we have started by prioritizing major reservoir dams and run-of-river barriers, for which more information is available. Our goal is to facilitate national-scale, basin-scale and global-scale mapping, analyses and understanding of all instream barriers, their impacts and their role in sustainable development through the provision of publicly accessible information and tools. We invite input and partnerships across sectors to strengthen GDW’s utility and relevance for all, help define database content and knowledge-base tools, and generally expand the reach of GDW as a global hub of impartial academic expertise and policy information regarding dams and other instream barriers.

Limited time and resources remain to constrain the climate crisis. Natural climate solutions represent promising options for protecting, managing and restoring natural lands for additional climate mitigation, but they differ in (1) magnitude and (2) immediacy of mitigation potential, as well as (3) cost-effectiveness and (4) the co-benefits they offer. Counter to an emerging preference for restoration, we use these four criteria to propose a general rule-of-thumb to first protect, manage, and then restore lands, but also show how these criteria explain alternative prioritization and portfolio schemes. This hierarchy offers a decision-making framework for public and private sector actors to optimize the effectiveness of natural climate solutions in an environment where resources are constrained, and time is short.

The sustainable use of fisheries resources is a priority of the African Union in developing the Blue Economy (BE). Growing global demand for seafood has attracted diverse actors to African waters, including Distant Water Fishing Nations (DWFNs) fleets. Complex fisheries governance challenges, unsustainable rates of fishing and rising fisheries-related crimes have ensued. To reverse these impacts, some African states are deploying various fisheries governance mechanisms. Drawing on extensive expert experiences, the review of literature, fisheries databases, international and regional agency reports, NGO and government reports and case studies from West and East Africa, we demonstrate two critical findings. First, fisheries governance mechanisms in Africa act largely to constrain small-scale fisheries (SSF) while failing to contain the industrial fisheries sector, resulting in the marginalisation of the SSF. Secondly, despite a higher incidence of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing in industrial fisheries than the SSF, fisheries governance mechanisms continue to advance the 'Survival of the Richest' – the industrial sector, to the detriment of the 'Fittest' – the SSF. The SSF supports millions of jobs and is better adapted to meet the continents' nutrition and socio-economic security. For the fisheries sector to contribute to the sustainable development of Africans, states must redirect governance towards regulating the industrial sector, emphasising equitable access for the SSF whilst prioritising ecological sustainability.