To date, the conservation of global biodiversity has relied on a patchwork of international goals and national- and regional-level plans. Hampered by poor planning, competing interests, and an incomplete view of large-scale ecosystem function, these efforts are failing. Effective biodiversity conservation will instead require a broad-based approach that relies on the empirical evaluation of ecosystem dynamics and conservation actions.

            Writing in BioScience, William Arlidge, E. J. Milner-Gulland, and colleagues present a unified framework to address these challenges: global mitigation hierarchies. These mitigation hierarchies encompass a four-step process of harm avoidance, minimization, remediation, and offsetting. The authors argue that by implementing such processes, global conservation priorities can be established in a way that bridges gaps in current regulatory regimes and enables more effective conservation. In this episode of BioScience Talks, Arlidge and Milner-Gulland join us to explain the approach in more detail and describe the possible paths to implementation.

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