A Global Mitigation Hierarchy for Nature Conservation

Abstract

Efforts to conserve biodiversity comprise a patchwork of international goals, national-level plans, and local interventions that, overall, are failing. We discuss the potential utility of applying the mitigation hierarchy, widely used during economic development activities, to all negative human impacts on biodiversity. Evaluating all biodiversity losses and gains through the mitigation hierarchy could help prioritize consideration of conservation goals and drive the empirical evaluation of conservation investments through the explicit consideration of counterfactual trends and ecosystem dynamics across scales. We explore the challenges in using this framework to achieve global conservation goals, including operationalization and monitoring and compliance, and we discuss solutions and research priorities. The mitigation hierarchy's conceptual power and ability to clarify thinking could provide the step change needed to integrate the multiple elements of conservation goals and interventions in order to achieve successful biodiversity outcomes.

The mitigation hierarchy for sharks: A risk‐based framework for reconciling trade‐offs between shark conservation and fisheries objectives

“…The mitigation hierarchy (MH) is a risk‐based precautionary approach for limiting the negative impacts of human activities on biodiversity (Arlidge et al, ). The MH was designed for infrastructure development projects in terrestrial ecosystems with effectively irreversible impacts (e.g., housing developments, roads, plantations).…”

“…The third step involves remediating negative impacts on biodiversity within the footprint of the damaging activity. The final step requires that any residual negative impacts are compensated for, through off‐site conservation actions which improve the status of the affected biodiversity elsewhere (Arlidge et al, ; CSBI, ; Milner‐Gulland et al, ). If applied successfully, the MH can lead to no net loss (NNL) of biodiversity or even net gain (BBOP, ; Bull, Suttle, Gordon, Singh, & Milner‐Gulland, ; zu Ermgassen et al, ; Gardner et al, ; Milner‐Gulland et al, ).…”

“…It has been most commonly been applied to development planning in terrestrial ecosystems; however, it has recently been proposed as a framework for least cost management of marine fisheries and bycatch mitigation (Milner‐Gulland et al, ; Squires & Garcia, ). The MH has also been recommended as a global framework to mitigate all negative impacts of human activity on biodiversity, and implement the goal of No Net Loss (NNL) of biodiversity as part of the Convention on Biological Diversity's Post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (Arlidge et al, ; IUCN, ).…”

To Conserve Nature in the Anthropocene, Half Earth Is Not Nearly Enough

“…8,12 Yet with all their limitations, networks of interconnected protected areas will continue to be critical for biodiversity conservation and should remain core components of regional and continental biodiversity conservation strategies, especially when accompanied by existing and new area-based approaches for conserving biodiversity within working landscapes, restoring degraded lands, and a variety of ''other effective conservation measures.'' 13,14 But protected areas alone will never be enough to conserve biodiversity across the anthropogenic terrestrial biosphere of the Anthropocene.…”

The minimum land area requiring conservation attention to safeguard biodiversity

“…Another strategy that may effectively limit the expansion of human pressures is to recognise Indigenous Peoples’ rights to land, benefit sharing, and institutions, so they can effectively conserve their own lands, as there is substantial global overlap between Indigenous lands and the important conservation land we identified 40 . On all identified conservation land, regardless of its immediate risk, the expansion of roads and developments such as agriculture, forestry, and mining, need to be very carefully managed to avoid net damage to ecosystems 41 . As such, mechanisms that direct developments away from important conservation areas are also crucial, including strengthening investment and performance standards (e.g.…”