Between-country collaboration and consideration of costs increase conservation planning efficiency in the Mediterranean Basin

Abstract

The importance of global and regional coordination in conservation is growing, although currently, the majority of conservation programs are applied at national and subnational scales. Nevertheless, multinational programs incur transaction costs and resources beyond what is required in national programs. Given the need to maximize returns on investment within limited conservation budgets, it is crucial to quantify how much more biodiversity can be protected by coordinating multinational conservation efforts when resources are fungible. Previous studies that compared different scales of conservation decision-making mostly ignored spatial variability in biodiversity threats and the cost of actions. Here, we developed a simple integrating metric, taking into account both the cost of conservation and threats to biodiversity. We examined the Mediterranean Basin biodiversity hotspot, which encompasses over 20 countries. We discovered that for vertebrates to achieve similar conservation benefits, one would need substantially more money and area if each country were to act independently as compared to fully coordinated action across the Basin. A fully coordinated conservation plan is expected to save approximately US$67 billion, 45% of total cost, compared with the uncoordinated plan; and if implemented over a 10-year period, the plan would cost Ϸ0.1% of the gross national income of all European Union (EU) countries annually. The initiative declared in the recent Paris Summit for the Mediterranean provides a political basis for such complex coordination. Surprisingly, because many conservation priority areas selected are located in EU countries, a partly coordinated solution incorporating only EU-Mediterranean countries is almost as efficient as the fully coordinated scenario. biodiversity costs ͉ complementarity ͉ vertebrates

Enhancing ecosystem restoration efficiency through spatial and temporal coordination

“…When poorly coordinated, these piecemeal mitigation efforts may be an inefficient means of achieving ecosystem-level objectives. Transboundary coordination is known to increase the cost-effectiveness of nature reserve networks (7)(8)(9), but the benefits of coordination are likely to be even greater for connectivity efforts in rivers because the dendritic nature of drainage basins makes them highly susceptible to fragmentation (10)(11)(12). Migratory fishes, which support major fisheries and ecosystem processes, are particularly vulnerable to life cycle disruption by the millions of dams and road crossings that fragment the world's rivers (13,14).…”

Evaluating the potential for transboundary management of marine biodiversity in the Western Indian Ocean

“…While conservation actions are very often planned and undertaken by individual countries independently of their neighbouring countries, cross-boundary collaborations and conflicts can be key in determining conservation outcomes (Kark et al 2009(Kark et al , 2015Mazor et al 2013). This can be the case for both island and continental nations, yet the impact of collaboration on conservation planning and outcomes has not been examined for most areas around the world.…”

“…Coordinated efforts can potentially reduce costs of protecting biodiversity and improve the efficient allocation of limited conservation resources (Dallimer & Strange 2015;Kark et al 2009;Mazor et al 2013;Pouzols et al 2014;Punt et al 2012). When countries have good relations (e.g.…”

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“…Among the more intuitive options is to concentrate efforts in places where multiple conservation benefits can be achieved simultaneously whenever such multi-objective hotspots are ecologically appropriate and socio-economically equitable (Beger et al, 2015;Kark et al, 2009;Venter et al, 2014). Since the World Heritage Convention was adopted in 1972, the World Heritage List has continually evolved and is growing steadily.…”