The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection

Pimm, Stuart L.; Jenkins, Clinton N.; Abell, Robin; Brooks, Thomas M.; Gittleman, John L.; Joppa, Lucas; Raven, Peter H.; Roberts, Callum M.; Sexton, Joseph O.

doi:10.1126/science.1246752

Cited by 2,722 publications

(2,029 citation statements)

References 112 publications

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“…Climate change is not the only danger. The current extinction rates of species, likely still underestimated, are about 1000 times the natural background rate of extinction and expected to increase in the future (Pimm et al 2014). The additional amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus activated by modern agriculture already erode the resilience of important earth subsystems (Galloway et al 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the challenges of the present article is to determine whether this argument still holds today. Since the advent of the polluter-pays principle, and even much earlier, many authors argued for a consumption tax levied on negative externalities (Pigou 1920;Sandmo 1975;Gorz 1988, 321;Daly and Farley 2010, 444) without specifying how the externalities would be calculated. Courchene and Allan (2009) suggest to create an Binternational carbon-added tax^applied to the cumulative carbon footprint of a product at the time of its implementation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From value-added tax to a damage and value-added tax partially based on life cycle assessment: principles and feasibility

Timmermans

Achten

2018

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Purpose The purpose of this article is to examine the arguments in favor of a shift from value-added tax (VAT) or sales tax to a damage and value-added tax (DaVAT) partially based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) of goods and services. With this shift, goods and services that seriously harm the environment and human health will be priced up, those that impact them less will be priced down. The paper recalls the proposal made by De Camillis and Goralczyk (Int J Life Cycle Assess 18: [263][264][265][266][267][268][269][270][271][272] 2013) to differentiate the VAT rate associated with products according to their environmental impacts over their life cycle. The paper suggests a new way to convert VAT into DaVAT, examines the operating principles of such a system, and considers its practical feasibility. The new policy tool based on LCA presented is intended to be applied to every country wishing to reform its consumption tax system in order to strive for a more sustainable future. Some aspects specific to countries having the same currency, notably the Euro zone, are also discussed. Methods The proposal of De Camillis and Goralczyk is discussed from the perspective of both environmental performance and compliance with LCA standards. To overcome the identified difficulties, a new way of adapting VAT (or consumption taxes in general) according to LCA is suggested. The proposal relies on three essential points: (i) apply VAT (or consumption taxes in general) to all goods and services and reduce its multiple rates to one single low rate (e.g., 3%) called uniform VAT (UVAT); (ii) add to UVAT a per-unit tax called global damage tax (GDT) calculated on the basis of environmental impacts assessed by means of specific or generic LCAs. In the case of potentially high-polluting products or industries, a specific LCA will be automatically imposed. The obligation to assess high-polluting activities already exists in many countries with, e.g., environmental impact studies, but the impacts are not necessarily evaluated by LCA; (iii) in order to reflect environmental, social, or ethical concerns specific to a country, another damage tax termed specific damage tax (SDT) is proposed that extends beyond LCA. DaVAT is the sum of UVAT, GDT, and SDT. DaVAT is conceived not as an additional burden but rather as a shift of taxation, as the rate of the old consumption taxes can decrease proportionally to the increase of GDT. DaVAT is also designed in such a way that the erosion of tax revenues, when pollutant would decline, is offset by the extension of the tax to all goods and services and by the possibility to gradually re-increase the UVAT rate when the number of highly polluting products decreases. Results and discussion The proposal is examined first from a theoretical point of view by considering which principles should be used to comply with LCA standards and general requirements of (environmental) tax policies. Four general principles emerge: consistency in the choice of the functional unit and in the characterization, n...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From value-added tax to a damage and value-added tax partially based on life cycle assessment: principles and feasibility

Timmermans

Achten

2018

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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“…Defaunation, i.e., the process of losing animal species, has been accelerated in the last five centuries, a fact by which some authors have contended that earth is experiencing a "sixth extinction wave" (Barnosky et al 2011, Pimm et al 2014, Ceballos et al 2015. Besides extinctions, abundance of vertebrates is sharply declining, leading to functional extinction of several species (Butchart et al 2010, Ceballos et al 2017.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Museum collections indicate bird defaunation in a biodiversity hotspot

et al. 2017

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Ipanema National Forest, southeastern Brazil, once contained 340 bird species. Forest cover suffered for centuries from log exploitation and, as a result, most of the remaining forests are now an impoverished subset of the original vegetation. We show how the bird community changed over time by comparing historical and recent records. Currently, 228 species can be recorded, for a compilation of 410 species, of which 359 are documented. Some 89 forest species with historical records failed to be detected in recent surveys. Of the 72 Atlantic Forest or Cerrado endemic species, no more than 29 (40%) are still found. The bird community changed from one which used to be related to coastline rain forests to another, which relates more to drier semideciduous forests of the interior.Keywords: Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, hierarchical cluster analysis, multivariate analysis, semideciduous forests. Coleções de museus indicam defaunação de aves em um hotspot de biodiversidadeResumo: A Floresta Nacional de Ipanema, sudeste do Brasil, já abrigou 340 espécies de aves. Sua cobertura florestal sofreu por séculos com a exploração de madeira e, desse modo, a maior parte da vegetação remanescente é uma sub-representação daquela original. Neste artigo é demonstrado como a comunidade de aves foi modificada com o passar do tempo por meio da comparação entre registros históricos e recentes. Atualmente, 228 espécies podem ser registradas, para um total de 410 espécies, das quais 359 possuem documentação. Das espécies registradas historicamente, 89 não foram mais detectadas. Das 72 espécies endêmicas da Mata Atlântica ou do Cerrado, apenas 29 (40%) ainda podem ser encontradas. A comunidade de aves, outrora similar à de florestas ombrófilas costeiras, atualmente é mais relaciona à comunidade de matas semideciduais mais secas do interior.

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“…This search for underlying mechanisms has recently acquired a special importance as many natural populations have suffered dramatic declines (Hunter, 2002) because of persecution, exploitation or habitat loss (Beissinger and Snyder, 1992;Casey and Myers, 1998;Krüger et al, , 2010Ferrer et al, 2003;Pimm et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term effective population size dynamics of an intensively monitored vertebrate population

et al. 2016

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Long-term genetic data from intensively monitored natural populations are important for understanding how effective population sizes (N e ) can vary over time. We therefore genotyped 1622 common buzzard (Buteo buteo) chicks sampled over 12 consecutive years (2002-2013 inclusive) at 15 microsatellite loci. This data set allowed us to both compare single-sample with temporal approaches and explore temporal patterns in the effective number of parents that produced each cohort in relation to the observed population dynamics. We found reasonable consistency between linkage disequilibrium-based single-sample and temporal estimators, particularly during the latter half of the study, but no clear relationship between annual N e estimates (N e ) and census sizes. We also documented a 14-fold increase inN e between 2008 and 2011, a period during which the census size doubled, probably reflecting a combination of higher adult survival and immigration from further afield. Our study thus reveals appreciable temporal heterogeneity in the effective population size of a natural vertebrate population, confirms the need for long-term studies and cautions against drawing conclusions from a single sample.

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The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection

Cited by 2,722 publications

References 112 publications

From value-added tax to a damage and value-added tax partially based on life cycle assessment: principles and feasibility

From value-added tax to a damage and value-added tax partially based on life cycle assessment: principles and feasibility

Museum collections indicate bird defaunation in a biodiversity hotspot

Long-term effective population size dynamics of an intensively monitored vertebrate population

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