IUCN Red List of Ecosystems
[2] Existing protocols developed by national or subnational authorities differed in focus and implementation, were often not comparable, and did not distinguish between strict risk analysis and the process of setting conservation priorities.
[3][4] In 2008, during the IV World Conservation Congress (Barcelona, Spain), the process of developing criteria to estimate their risk status was activated and the IUCN laid the foundations for the creation of a Red List of Ecosystems (RLE).
Like other IUCN products, the LRE provides an opportunity to facilitate the achievement of international conservation objectives and allows to assess an ecosystem's danger of collapse either globally or by portions developed over a region, country, or subnational entity.
This provides a means to make more effective territorial arrangements, minimizing the impacts from the anthropic transformations of large surfaces.
It prioritizes ecosystems with the most imminent chances of disappearing, focussing on them the greatest efforts to mitigate environmental threats, and create effective protected areas to safeguard them.
They are designed to be: broadly applicable across type ecosystems and geographic areas, transparent and scientifically rigorous, and easy to understand by decision makers and the public.
An ecosystem is Collapsed when it is virtually certain that its defining biotic or abiotic features are lost from all occurrences, and the characteristic native biota are no longer sustained.
[20] The Helsinki Commission used the category endangered to denote a heavy decline in distribution or quality of baltic habitats and biotopes.
[13] An ecosystem is Data Deficient when there is inadequate information to make a direct, or indirect, assessment of its risk of collapse based on decline in distribution, disruption of ecological function or degradation of the physical environment.
Multiple threats and symptoms can be integrated into an ecosystem dynamics model to produce quantitative estimates of the risk of collapse (E).
The RLE risk categories acronyms (CO, CR, EN, VU, NT, LC, DD, NE) are in English and, unlike others, do not change in line with the language in which it is written.
A fair evaluation of it effectiveness and importance needs to consider its real achievements in conservation and natural resource management, a balance between benefits and limitations and its performance against alternative methods.
Overall investment has been modest compared to other, long standing conservation knowledge products, but its reception in public audiences and media has been positive.
[26][23] It is considered a potentially important tool for creating indicators of progress of international policy, such as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and the Sustainable Development Goals, but it is still lacking widespread implementation and adoption.
[30] While a standard taxonomy of organisms has existed for nearly 300 years,[31] the principles for systematization of ecosystem diversity have only been laid out recently and still require wider adoption.
[36] This would save time and resources previously used to develop local guidelines, and would allow regions to share and compare experiences, and avoid common pitfalls.
