Humans are waging a senseless war on nature.
Our actions have adversely affected 75% of the land
and 66% of the oceans. Our increasing population and changing climate
has led to the exploitation and destruction of natural habitats.
At the same time, nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history
with as many as a million species facing extinction.
We’re running out of time. If we do not take dramatic action,
we will witness irreversible damage to our natural world
and risk the collapse of our societies.
Conservation and effective conservation projects are key to how change direction.
The good news is that funding for the environment is on the rise
as governments and businesses are becoming increasingly aware of the need to act and quickly
to protect our natural world so that it can protect us.
The UK has been an international leader in conservation and biodiversity and continues
to have significant ambition in this area
both internationally and here at home in the United Kingdom.
Internationally, we’ll commit 3 billion pounds of international climate finance
to see conservation outcomes around the world through the Nature for Climate Fund.
We’ll also, here in the UK,
working to increase carbon storage and biodiversity across our landscapes.
This work must be well informed by evidence. We’re critically reliant on using evidence
to make the best policy for biodiversity and habitat outcomes.
We’re facing an evidence emergency that’s stopping us conserving biodiversity
in the way we need to for the future of the planet.
Decisions are being made without the best available information,
and fund being wasted on actions known to be ineffective.
We needed to change this, so we worked with our
international group of experts to create a free open access website of evidence.
Using our conservation evidence database, busy practitioners and policymakers
can take less than a minutes to look at whether something is effective
and a few more to find an alternative intervention, if it’s not.
And it’s working!
Conservation organizations are using the evidence
and modifying plans to increase the chance of success.
At the Whitley Fund for Nature, we’re proud to have awarded 20 million in conservation funding
to over 200 conservationists working in 80 countries across the global south.
We ask applicants to really scrutinize their project design, their assumptions and objectives
and look at the available evidence looking at the Conservation Evidence website
and using all of that combined. Really think about why it is that their
objectives and their proposed interventions will succeed and be effective.
We have a huge network of global collaborators who are helping us to
collate the evidence and to embed it in practice.
Some of these have become our evidence champions,
organizations who are committed to use evidence in their work.
Others are also routinely using evidence, such as Iroro,
with the Small Mammal Conservation Organisation based in Nigeria.
The key aim of our conservation research and intervention projects
at Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary and Cross River National Park
is really to prevent wildfires in order to protect wildlife habitats,
especially for the endangered short-tailed roundleaf bat.
Without evidence, making decisions is kind of like walking blind.
The conservation evidence ecosystem of tools has really helped us
to narrow down what we need to deploy our conservation intervention,
but also what kinds of evidence we need to generate
where possible within our projects.
So, it's a really cool way of setting yourself up for success.
I am Vikash Tatayah, Conservation Director of the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation.
In my role, I tried to save birds, plants and reptiles of the Republic of Mauritius.
The key aim of the conservation research project that we did
was to try to exclude African land snails from entering
nests of echo parakeets and smothering the babies to death.
I have loved publishing in Conservation Evidence, and I would advise all conservation practitioners:
the minute that you have a problem, the first reaction would
be almost a knee-jerk reaction is to go on the Conservation Evidence website
and look out for examples of similar problems and solutions which have been found.
It's free, and it saves you a hell of a lot of time and effort
trying to reinvent the wheel otherwise.
Designing new woods is a lot more than just about planting trees,
it's a long-term commitment to establishing those woods
so that they can realize the benefits for the future,
benefits for nature recovery, all for the climate crisis,
and our new woodland creation guide uses evidence to enable practitioners to achieve that.
I'm Ally Evans, I'm a marine ecologist
researching ways of enhancing and restoring marine biodiversity.
Artificial structures are spreading around our
coasts and seas to support growing populations and marine industries.
The problem is that they often cause negative impacts on the receiving environments,
and they don't tend to support the vibrant variety of marine life found in natural rocky habitats.
It is possible to enhance biodiversity on marine structures by building in different
habitat designs, this is called eco-engineering.
So now we've created this evidence-based resource through the Conservation Evidence project
to help people to plan, design and manage
eco-engineered artificial structures that are better for marine biodiversity.
Conservation groups like these from all around the world are working
to reverse the damage, we've done to nature
and restore the earth's ecosystems. But this needs to be achieved with
real speed and efficiency. There is no time to waste.
I'm excited that Bill with his team at Cambridge and all the experts they connect
with around the world have created this amazing resource.
It's directing conservationists towards the activities that have the best possible chances
of protecting our habitats and species, the life support systems of our planet.