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  • Review Article
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Biodiversity’s contributions to sustainable development

Nature Sustainability volume 2, pages 1083–1093 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

International concern to develop sustainably challenges us to act upon the inherent links between our economy, society and environment, and is leading to increasing acknowledgement of biodiversity’s importance. This Review discusses the breadth of ways in which biodiversity can support sustainable development. It uses the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a basis for exploring scientific evidence of the benefits delivered by biodiversity. It focuses on papers that provide examples of how biodiversity components (that is, ecosystems, species and genes) directly deliver benefits that may contribute to the achievement of individual SDGs. It also considers how biodiversity’s direct contributions to fulfilling some SDGs may indirectly support the achievement of other SDGs to which biodiversity does not contribute directly. How the attributes (for example, diversity, abundance or composition) of biodiversity components influence the benefits delivered is also presented, where described by the papers reviewed. While acknowledging potential negative impacts and trade-offs between different benefits, the study concludes that biodiversity may contribute to fulfilment of all SDGs.

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Fig. 1: Country groupings by relative levels of biodiversity intactness and development.

Base map: Esri, DeLorme Publishing Company, Inc.

Fig. 2: A summary illustration of our examples of the ways that biodiversity contributes to the SDGs.

United Nations (UN/SDG).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Malgorzata Blicharska, Richard J. Smithers.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Malgorzata Blicharska & Patrik Rönnbäck

  2. Ricardo Energy & Environment, Didcot, UK

    Richard J. Smithers

  3. Grimsö Wildlife Research Station, Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Riddarhyttan, Sweden

    Grzegorz Mikusiński

  4. Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster, UK

    Paula A. Harrison

  5. Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

    Måns Nilsson

  6. Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    William J. Sutherland

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Contributions

M.B. and R.J.S. conceived the Review and wrote the manuscript. M.B. undertook the literature search and was supported by R.J.S. in identifying relevant examples. G.M. undertook the analysis for Fig. 1. All authors contributed to ideas and editing.

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Correspondence to Malgorzata Blicharska.

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Supplementary Information sections 1–2, table and refs. 1–4.

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Blicharska, M., Smithers, R.J., Mikusiński, G. et al. Biodiversity’s contributions to sustainable development. Nat Sustain 2, 1083–1093 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0417-9

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