Optimizing Hotspot Areas for Ecological Planning and Management Based on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

The significance of biodiversity and ecosystem services are gradually recognized by human as an approach towards sustainability, so it is important to understand relationships and congruence between them to support conservation planning, especially in the hotspot areas with a prominent role in conservation. However, the management of most conservation hotspots mainly focused on biodiversity, and rarely concerned with ecosystem services. With the aim of proposing criteria for conservation strategies that contribute to the optimization of biodiversity and ecosystem services, in this study, a Geographic Information System(GIS)-based approach was designed to estimate and map the biodiversity and ecosystem services in Chongqing Municipality of China. Furthermore, the distributions of hotspot areas for biodiversity and ecosystem services were mapped based on the relationship between cumulative ecosystem services and areas. Finally the statistical analysis was processed focused on specific conservation objectives. The results showed that hotspot areas can conserve the most biodiversity but with the least ecosystem services under the conservation plans target to biodiversity conservation. In contrast, depending on the ecosystem services of interest, hotspot areas can conserve the largest ecosystem services but with the least biodiversity. By integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services into conservation plan, we found that the conservation and regeneration of these small areas, would contribute to a conservation of 44% of the biodiversity hotspot and 14%–42% of the ecosystem services hotspot. Moreover, the current nature reserve selection was not maximize the biodiversity and ecosystem services compared to integration strategy, indicating that hotspot areas conservation and selection is vital for optimization protection of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and has practical significance for natural resources and ecosystem management.

Strategic Prospective Methodology to Explore Sustainable Futures

This paper shows prospective methodology as a tool to generate strategic knowledge for designing sustainable futures. The strategic prospective is a social science discipline dedicated to explore the future. Based on qualitative methods with participative experts and stakeholders, the strategic prospective allows designing different future scenarios and planning the transformation of a current situation into a desired future. To design sustainable futures, this paper proposes a four-stage methodology： understanding the context; strategy visualization; design of alternative scenarios and definition of desired future; and planning its construction. This methodology makes evident the possibility of seeking alternative scenarios for a sustainable future in different scopes, particularly, in two prospective applications： biodiversity conservation and water treatment. The outcomes of the application have allowed proposing strategies and policies for the management of environmental goods, such as environmental services and water reuse, with a long-time outlook based on a collective desired future.

国际热带木材组织关注森林环境服务及其市场问题

在2003年11月于日本横滨召开的国际热带木材协定(1994)的后续协定谈判预备委员会第二次会议上，国际热带木材理事会主席Jürgen Blaser博士代表S．Scherr等作者做了一项关于热带森林环境服务及其市场方面的报告。