Twenty-First Century Ecosystems: Managing the Living World Two Centuries After Darwin. Report of a Symposium

摘要

The publication of the report Biodiversity by the National Academy of Sciences/Smithsonian Institution in 1988 helped reframe the concept of biological diversity as a global resource, to be indexed, used, and above all, preserved, and captured the attention of the public and policy makers. Earlier concerns about biological extinction had led to the passage of the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973, but the 1986 National Academy of Sciences forum, on which the Biodiversity report was based, placed contemporary biological extinctions in a broader ecological, economic, and global development context. In subsequent decades, studies of biodiversity broadened still further to encompass diversity at the genetic and ecosystem levels. Concepts of ecosystem services and natural capital also emerged as a means of illuminating and capturing the value of biodiversity and ecosystems to human well-being. The imperative of an international approach to the conservation of biological resources resulted in the introduction of the Convention on Biological Diversity at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and its subsequent ratification by almost all of the countries of the world.