Achievement

IGERT Fellow, Chris Guo, reports: My work was part of a publication to appear in a special feature of the journal Conservation Biology on biodiversity security. It was a product of collaboration with climate scientists and environment economists. Little is known about the costs and implementation context of conservation responses to climate change. We investigated a set of responses in the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa using a conservation plan tracking climate change until 2050. These responses include seed banking and expanding current protected areas by 240,000 ha using on- and off-reserve mechanisms. We found that the costs for all of the options investigated were much higher than existing budgets. We proposed that if they were examined in relation to: their benefits, the planning environment and partnerships for building sustainable futures, then the costs themselves would become less of a barrier to implementation.