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Conservation needs to integrate knowledge across scales

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 6, pages 118–119 (2022)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Wyborn and Evans1 argue that global priority maps for conservation have questionable utility and may crowd out local and more contextual research. While we agree with the authors’ central argument that effective and equitable conservation must be rooted at local scales, the assertion that “conservation needs to break free from global priority mapping” presents a false dichotomy. We should not think in terms of a binary choice of methods (local or global), but rather recognize that information across scales will have the most relevance and power in the future. Wyborn and Evans challenge the creators of global maps to identify their theory of change. Here, we outline six major areas of contribution relevant for priority setting and other conservation-related decisions.

(1) Broader context for local decisions. Making effective local policy relies on anticipating economic, political or environmental change operating at larger scales and understanding how it affects local social or biophysical conditions. Global maps reveal the importance of distant connections (also known as telecoupling) in driving change in nature and its contributions to people2. Similarly, species extinction risk is governed by how rare a species is, and a purely local focus cannot fully reveal the regional, continental and global landscape of extinction risks3. Analyses of linkages across scales from local to regional to global are essential for a full understanding of the impacts of policies or actions. Ignoring linkages across scales results in missed opportunities and unintended consequences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute on the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer

  2. Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, USA

    Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer & Kate A. Brauman

  3. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, USA

    Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Jesús Pinto-Ledezma & Stephen Polasky

  4. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (IMBIV), CONICET and FCEFyN, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina

    Sandra Díaz

  5. International Institute for Sustainability, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Gabriela Teixeira Duarte, Joana Madeira Krieger & Bernardo B. N. Strassburg

  6. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Brian J. Enquist

  7. Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Rd., Santa Fe, NM, USA

    Brian J. Enquist

  8. Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural, Río Negro, Argentina

    Lucas A. Garibaldi

  9. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural, Río Negro, Argentina

    Lucas A. Garibaldi

  10. Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Jonas Geldmann

  11. National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Benjamin S. Halpern

  12. Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Benjamin S. Halpern

  13. Agricultural Economics, Purdue University, West Layfayette, IN, USA

    Thomas W. Hertel

  14. San Diego Botanic Garden, Encinitas, CA, USA

    Colin K. Khoury

  15. International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Cali, Colombia

    Colin K. Khoury

  16. Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine, Univeristé Grenoble Alpes - CNRS - Universtté Savoie-Mt Blanc, Grenoble, France

    Sandra Lavorel

  17. Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Senckenberg Gesellschaft fuer Naturforschung, Frankfurt (Main), Germany

    Thomas Mueller

  18. Department of Biological Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt (Main), Germany

    Thomas Mueller

  19. Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Rachel A. Neugarten

  20. Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, USA

    Stephen Polasky

  21. Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK

    Andy Purvis

  22. Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain

    Victoria Reyes-García

  23. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain

    Victoria Reyes-García

  24. Moore Center for Science, Conservation International, Arlington, VA, USA

    Patrick R. Roehrdanz

  25. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Lynne J. Shannon

  26. Global Science, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), San Francisco, CA, USA

    M. Rebecca Shaw

  27. Rio Conservation and Sustainability Science Centre, Department of Geography and the Environment, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Bernardo B. N. Strassburg

  28. Bioprotection Aotearoa, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Jason M. Tylianakis

  29. Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Peter H. Verburg

  30. IIASA - International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Piero Visconti

  31. Basque Centre for Climate Change bc3, Scientific Campus of the University of the Basque Country, Biscay, Spain

    Noelia Zafra-Calvo

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  1. Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer
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  21. Lynne J. Shannon
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  22. M. Rebecca Shaw
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  23. Bernardo B. N. Strassburg
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Correspondence to Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer.

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Chaplin-Kramer, R., Brauman, K.A., Cavender-Bares, J. et al. Conservation needs to integrate knowledge across scales. Nat Ecol Evol 6, 118–119 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01605-x

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