EFIMED Scientific Seminar

Biodiversity of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems: changing the paradigm of conservation

Understanding community dynamics, fostering evolutionary processes, promoting values

Date: April 6, 2011

Coordinators: François Lefevre, Yves Birot, Carles Gracia and Marc Palahi

Target audience: scientists, policy makers, managers and forest owners

Background

Biodiversity or biological diversity constitutes the living tissue of the Planet, whose mankind is part of and fully depends on (food, fibres, bio-energy, soil fertility, etc.). It comprises all forms of life on the Globe, the relationships between them and with their environments since the common origin of life. Biodiversity should be looked at from the angle of a continuous evolution of the life on Earth, including the human species. Biodiversity encompasses three levels: i) genetic diversity refers to the diversity of genes of all living organisms; Genes allow the transmission of traits peculiar to a species. Gene diversity reflects the diversity of traits of a population; it includes gene characteristics and their distribution within a species (intraspecific diversity) but also among different species (interspecific diversity); ii) specific diversity or diversity of species (including Man); it is expressed by: the number of living species, their taxonomic positioning, the number of species per area unit and the number of individuals of each species; iii) ecosystems diversity (including those hosting a marked endemic and threatened biodiversity); it characterizes the variability of ecosystems, their distribution on the globe, and reflects the richness of structural and functional relationships between species, populations and with the ecosystems. Biodiversity takes also into account all scales of size, time and area.

Objectives

Since biodiversity has emerged in the public and political debate as a hot issue in relation to increased human pressure and climate change, the focus has been put to a large extent on conservation aspects related to specific and ecosystem diversity. Although such an approach is absolutely useful, it tends to implicitly admit a kind of invariance of biodiversity and to overlook its dynamic and evolutionary nature. This is why the objective of the scientific seminar, is to discuss from a multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholders perspective emerging issues regarding biodiversity in the Mediterranean region and the role of science x society interplay. More concretely the seminar will address the following issues:

(1) the new knowledge available regarding the understanding of functional aspects of biodiversity;
(2) the latest knowledge of processes and mechanisms that underlie the dynamics of biodiversity as a prerequisite to sound ecosystem management and finally
(3) to discuss how to account for the value of biodiversity and how to finance such non-market service.

Structure

The seminar will consist of three sessions:

a) Session 1: Biodiversity and ecosystem function(ing?); do ”biodiverse” ecosystems have a comparative advantage?
b) Session 2: How plant communities move?
c) Session 3: Valuing and financing biodiversity in forest ecosystems