Browsing by Subject "biodiversity"

Urban spatial planning is a cooperative mechanism in ethics which seeks to regulate how land is used, modified and arranged in order to sustain quasi-stable coexistences of dense populations with varied needs and values. Perhaps no needs and values are more varied than those of the many nonhuman animals which live alongside humans in urban spaces. Communicative planning theory (CPT) has emerged over the last 30 years to improve planning’s ethical content by navigating fuller and more diverse multi-interest, multi-stakeholder discourses. The perceived or real absence of significant human-nonhuman animal communications presents a problem for incorporating animals into communicative planning’s anthroponormative frameworks. This thesis adopts a socioecologically hybridized perspective to explore why and how animals may be conceived of as stakeholders in communicative planning, what values and practices produce human-nonhuman animal relationships, and how these translate to outcomes in spatial planning. Using theories which question the viability of the human-animal binary, especially actor network theory (ANT) and Callon’s sociology of translation, I develop my own relational perspective of urban communicative and spatial planning practice that may include nonhuman animals as part of urban spatial planning’s ‘decision-making spaces’. I use this approach in analysis of a spatial planning problem involving three species of nonhuman animals, the Jokeri Light Rail of Helsinki, Finland. From the case study I draw conclusions about how nonhuman animals relate, communicate and negotiate within spatial planning systems in fundamentally distinct ways requiring the development of new communicative apparatus and stakeholder engagement tools. In conclusion, I discuss the ways in which the animal-as-stakeholder concept might be affirmatively used by professional planners to achieve better outcomes for multi-species communities. This means conceiving of urban development not as a battle of human progress against biodiversity conservation, but a multivariable negotiation to reach ‘good enough’ outcomes for a multitude of organisms. I conclude that contemporary spatial planning’s ethical aims of creating quasi-stable urban coexistences demands developing deliberative processes of decision-making with and in a multispecies community.

Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract In this Master’s thesis I investigate Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) involvement, experiences and outcomes in Madagascar, including the limiting and enabling factors for impact of conservation interventions driven by NGOs. The focal point of the research is the lived experiences from the field, including identification of processes and forces shaping the preconditions for NGO interventions. As part of the research I explore experiences of NGOs from their interventions and from engaging with local communities, government, policy makers and other NGOs in Madagascar. Many NGOs are active in biodiversity hotspots like Madagascar, but evaluation outcomes and lessons learned tend not to be extensively shared across organizations and thematic focus areas. This in turn affects preconditions to influence outcome determinants not only in isolated interventions but also across organizational borders. This study aims to define the situation and the issues faced by NGOs in Madagascar to suggest how the landscape could be navigated to improve the preconditions for long term intervention impact. The purpose is not to evaluate specific projects, but to assess the mechanisms through which the NGO sector can make a significant contribution to conservation, as well as the challenges in doing so. As the analysis seeks to broaden and contextualize the discussion of NGO involvement in conservation interventions, the theoretical framework for the research is based on theory on Non-Governmental Organizations and grounded theory. The theoretical framework facilitates the analysis of the findings, understanding of the results, as well as structuring and highlighting new insights. The theory is complemented with a background assessment of the environmental context in Madagascar, reviewing other research on conservation and its challenges in the country. This helps to understand the dimensions of the challenges, as well as the avenues open for exploration. Insights are gathered from representatives of long-term in situ NGOs to better understand the wider playing field in which they operate. The empirical research is based on semi-structured interviews conducted with 21 representatives from 12 international and local NGOs working with biodiversity conservation in Madagascar. The data was transcribed and analyzed through thematic network analysis and constructivist grounded theory analysis. The interviews were combined with a literature review, a group interview, a field visit to a project site, and more informal conversations with academic researchers and experts in the field. As part of the study, a two-week field trip to Madagascar was undertaken. To present the findings from this research, thematic categorizations were used to illustrate factors that affect outcomes of conservation interventions driven by NGOs. The categories are related to internal organization specific factors, cooperation with other actors (including other NGOs, government and actors in the local communities), as well as the Malagasy environment and politics (including government, laws and policies). The findings reveal challenges especially with systematic coordination of NGO interventions, NGO evaluation practices, resources, as well as issues with implementing sustainable community involvement in project design and decision making. Local community involvement is considered important, but in practice is not fully scaled up and inclusive in terms of decision making and consistent involvement. Findings indicate that the cooperation between NGOs and their key stakeholders works reasonably well from the NGO perspective, but still has potential to be better utilized in order to improve long-term sustainability. Consideration of external constraints is important to assess the potential of different types of interventions and approaches, allowing NGOs to focus their efforts according to the context and their capacities. While acknowledging and navigating the diversity of viewpoints, it is essential to be aware of the impact of structural challenges, the political complexity and the often-conflicting interests between conservation, the commercial and extractive sector, as well as local livelihoods and practices. Findings indicate issues with policy implementation and harmonization, and with conservation prioritization and law enforcement by the government. Local and national ownership and leadership backing is seen as essential for biodiversity conservation, pushing for stronger leadership from within the society. My research provides insights, recommendations and conclusions from which NGOs and conservation actors can gain better understanding of factors impacting interventions, as well as on the Malagasy playing field and its dynamics. This can be helpful in order to capitalize on opportunities and counter challenges, focusing actions on areas that make a difference. The findings can also be of value to other biodiversity conservation researchers, funding agencies, associations, communities and government stakeholders specifically focused on Madagascar. The research may also benefit NGOs and conservation actors involved in other countries, which confront similar challenges concerning conservation, governance, NGO involvement and interventions.

The purpose of this study was to study the current biodiversity management practices in three large size companies and to study the biggest challenges the case companies are facing regarding biodiversity management. Biodiversity loss has been discussed for decades, but in only in recent years biodiversity has been more discussed also from more strategic point of view in the corporate world. The private sector has a considerable impact on biodiversity as well as a large part of the capacity to slow down and change the direction of biodiversity loss. Therefore, it is important that also the private sector considers and manages its impacts on biodiversity. The study was conducted as a qualitative case study including three case companies. The data was gathered through half-structured questionnaires through Microsoft Forms, a one-hour distance discussion with each of the companies, and from the latest annual reports in the fall of 2020. The results showed that biodiversity is considered to be an important topic among the case companies and that they are increasingly considering their impact on biodiversity as well. All case companies expect regulation on biodiversity to increase in the future and also the stakeholder demand around the topic has increased. However, only one of the companies has considered their impacts on biodiversity for years already; they have a management plan and they are following a specific reporting framework. Two of the companies have started to consider biodiversity separately or as a part of their other sustainability topics but they do not yet have biodiversity management plans in place nor do they follow any specific reporting framework. Regarding the biggest difficulties, the results show that especially finding suitable indicators and measuring the impacts on biodiversity are considered difficult. The results also show that understanding the concept of biodiversity and how biodiversity is related to the business is difficult. Companies also see that there is a lot of information regarding biodiversity available, but knowledge on how to use it for managing biodiversity is lacking. The results as well as the literature review indicate that impacts on biodiversity is increasingly managed but there are difficulties that need to be overcome. There are several biodiversity management frameworks that can be used for assessing the impacts and building suitable management plans. The better understanding companies have on their impacts biodiversity and vice versa, the better. It must be noted that the results indicate the views of large size (over 40 million € net revenue) companies in sectors that have rather direct impact on biodiversity. Therefore, the results may differ when studying companies of different sizes and from other sectors.

Climate change and the biodiversity loss have created a need to change forest management in commercial forests. Carbon sequestration, climate change adaptation, and biodiversity conservation can be promoted in commercial forests through various measures, and this thesis examines what factors affect non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners’ willingness to adopt such forest management practices. Additionally, the aim was to examine whether these factors vary among different measures. A systematic literature review was conducted to summarize previous research on the subject and to serve as reference for an empirical analysis. In the empirical part of the study, survey data of 405 Finnish NIPF owners was utilized to establish binary logistic regression models for forest owners’ willingness to adopt 13 distinct forest management practices. In the empirical analysis statistically significant factors varied among assessed forest management practices, although some patterns were recognized. The most striking consistencies were found concerning older forest owners reluctance towards deadwood in general, and positive effect of environmental motivation in willingness to adopt variety of measures, as long as they do not conflict with biodiversity. Overall, the results imply that the diversity of NIPF owners concerns also their stances on various forest management practices, and they are not indifferent in terms of what forest management practices they are willing to adopt. Thus, when designing and implementing policies and advisory services aiming to promote carbon sequestration, climate change adaptation, or biodiversity protection in commercial forests, policy makers should take into account forest owners’ heterogenous preferences regarding different forest management practices.

Arctic ecosystems face drastic changes in community structure due to warming, shrubification, permafrost loss, and other environmental changes. Due to the spatial heterogeneity of these ecosystems, understanding such changes on a local scale requires high-resolution data. Earth observation using satellite imagery and aerial photography has become a staple in mapping large areas and general patterns. Advances in sensor technology, the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and increases in processing capacity enable the use of higher spatial and spectral resolutions. As a result, more detailed ecological observations can be made using remote sensing methods. In this thesis, I assess how increased spectral resolution affects the remote-sensing based modelling of plant communities in low-growth oroarctic tundra heaths. Based on a large field observation dataset, I estimate biomass, leaf area index, species richness, Shannon's biodiversity index, and fuzzy community clusters. I then build random forest models of these with image data of varying spectral, spatial, and temporal specifications and topographical data. Finally, I create maps of the vegetation. Leaf area index and biomass are best estimated of the response variables, with R2 values of 0.64 and 0.59, respectively, with multispectral data proving the most important explanatory dataset. Biodiversity metrics are best estimated with R2 values of 0.40–0.50 with the most important explanatory variables being topographical and hyperspectral, and community cluster with R2 values of 0.27–0.53, with the importance of various explanatory variables depending on the cluster being estimated. These results can help choose a suitable high-resolution remote sensing approach for modelling plant communities in similar conditions.

As biodiversity is being lost worldwide at an accelerating rate due to anthropogenic activities, the frequency and severity of many infectious diseases has been observed to increase. Together these patterns have brought forth an urgent need to understand the possible linkages between biodiversity and disease risk. Two contradicting hypotheses have been proposed to explain the diversity-disease relationship. The dilution effect hypothesis suggests that increasing host community species diversity ‘dilutes’ disease risk, whereas the amplification effect hypothesis predicts disease risk to increase with increasing diversity. Even though most of the studies support the dilution effect, there remains an intensive debate regarding the generality of this effect. As most of the research efforts to understand the relationship between diversity and disease have focused on animals and crop plants or have been carried out experimentally, one of the research gaps is how relevant the dilution effect is in wild plant communities. In nature, plants and their diseases are affected simultaneously by multiple abiotic and biotic environmental factors that might confound or supersede the effects of diversity. It is also poorly understood, whether we might expect dilution effects to occur not only on diversity gradients driven by anthropogenic diversity loss, but also on natural diversity gradients. To study the possible association between host community species diversity and disease risk in the wild and to test whether this association could be detected after accounting for the effects of abiotic factors, I surveyed grassland vascular plant communities for their species diversity and foliar disease symptoms along a natural diversity gradient driven by elevation. I also recorded data on the mean soil surface temperature in the surveyed plant communities and used structural equation modelling to differentiate and compare the effects of biotic and abiotic variables on disease risk. The data were collected on Mount Calanda in the Swiss Alps during summer 2019. In this thesis I show that host community species diversity and disease risk are negatively associated with each other along a natural diversity gradient driven by elevation. Furthermore, this negative effect can be detected even after accounting for the effects of elevation and mean soil surface temperature on disease. Together the results support the occurrence and the ecological relevance of the dilution effect in wild plant communities along natural diversity gradients and suggest that diversity might protect wild plant communities from increased disease risk. Future studies should aim to identify the exact mechanisms of the association to help us better understand when and where we might expect dilution effects to occur in the wild. This knowledge can be used to predict how epidemics, that affect the well-being of ecosystems, humans and wildlife, are born in the changing world.

Biological diversity has been decreasing since industrial revolution, and the loss of biodiversity has become a com-mon topic in different groups from environmental organizations to consumers worldwide. Different goals for biodiver-sity conservation have been set both at the global and domestic level, but the continuous postponement of the tar-gets indicates that the government institutions establishing rules for protecting biodiversity are no longer sufficient, and new methods must be developed. One way how biodiversity can be protected is different ecological compensa-tion mechanisms. Ecological compensation is a process where project developers compensate for conservation efforts by creating ecologically equivalent profits or credits elsewhere. Globally, different ecological compensation mechanisms have been used for a long time as a part of nature conser-vation activities. In many countries, these activities are often based on legislation and regulations, such as in the US, Australia, and Germany. Additionally, every EU member state belongs to Natura 2000 network, where various com-pensation regulations have been implemented by the EU’s Habitat Directive. Voluntary-based compensation activi-ties on the other hand are newer way to protect nature and this study focuses on the use of these voluntary activities in Finland. One target group of potential users of ecological compensation mechanisms in Finland are companies that weaken or use different natural resources in their operations. Each company undertakes environmental responsibility in different ways, but ecological compensation as a way to conserve nature could be a powerful tool for companies to show their environmental responsibility. The aim of this study is to determine companies' perspectives on voluntary ecological compensation and analyze critical factors that affect companies’ willingness to participate in voluntary compensation projects in Finland. Three main objectives of this research include: 1) identifying the attractiveness of voluntary ecological compensation from private companies’ perspective 2) defining the most attractive compensation mechanisms and structures from the companies’ point of view and 3) further analysis of the risks and opportunities affect target companies that partici-pate in voluntary compensation projects. This study was conducted by using a qualitative research method. Re-search material was collected in the meetings with companies by using the participant observation mechanism. Study results highlighted, that the attractiveness of ecological compensation is based on multiple different factors that companies consider as important and which should be included in the compensation project. These factors are such as specific location of compensation area and certain ecosystem services in the compensation area. Most importantly, compensation must be related to companies’ operations at some level. Businesses do not get involved if the projects are not targeted to them, and especially if those are not approved by the relevant stakeholders.

Biodiversity degrades at an alarming rate, both globally and in Finland. Habitat loss is the most significant threat for biodiversity. Biodiversity offsets (also called ecological compensation) are becoming a common market-based policy instrument, aimed at balancing economic development and conservation of ecosystems and species. Offsets are designed to compensate for the residual environmental impacts of development projects, after avoiding and minimizing impacts on site. The idea is that costs of conservation are allocated to the party responsible for habitat degradation, thus a polluter pays principle is implemented. Offsets complement the pre-existing conservation instruments. Ecological risks as well as the theoretical and practical challenges of offsetting are widely discussed in literature but economic analysis on biodiversity offsetting schemes is limited to few. The aim of this thesis is to increase the understanding of the economic basis of biodiversity offset markets and in particular, the influence of trading ratios and intermediaries. I developed an equilibrium model, and applied it to Finnish data and three selected habitat types: abundant mires, scarce herb-rich forests, and laborious and valuable rural biotopes. The supply of offsets comes from habitat restoration and nature management. Data on the areas suitable for habitat restoration, restoration measures and associated costs were obtained from several documented sources. I utilized the results of the working group on improving the status of habitats in Finland (ELITE, Kotiaho et al. 2015), and supplemented it with an expert survey that I designed to estimate the changes in the selected habitat types after restoration and management under uncertainties. I used Monte Carlo simulation to examine the impacts and risks of uncertainties. Further, I estimated demand based on a report by Tiitu et al. (2015) where they predict the increase of built-up areas and infrastructure in Finland for a time period of 2013-2040. I examined how the market equilibrium, prices, and quantities traded depended on trading ratios. Trading ratios differ depending on whether biodiversity losses from development are ecologically equivalent to gains from compensation or not. I also examined the role of an intermediary, a broker firm. The intermediary helps demanders and suppliers meet each other with minimal transaction costs, safeguards against risks and guarantees maturity and quality of offsets. The analysis showed that the presence of the intermediary affects the trading ratios as there is a time delay between losses and gains which must be discounted to present time if the intermediary is not in the market guaranteeing mature offsets. Time discounting further increases trading ratios. The results show that the market size could be considerable and providing offsets could be a profitable business for landowners. There is enough land for compensations in Finland, even when trading ratios are relatively high. The presence of the intermediary in the market decreases both the trading ratios and credit prices, which lowers the costs of compensation for developers. Both ecological and economic risks may decrease as the intermediary safeguards against failures in restoration by guaranteeing that all offsets provide good quality. Pricing these services in the market does not excessively increase offset prices and shrink the market size.

Biodiversity has been declining over the last decades due to land-use changes. Habitat loss and fragmentation are considered the key drivers of biodiversity loss. While evidence indicates that habitat loss has a negative impact on biodiversity, the effect of fragmentation itself is debated. The Habitat Amount Hypothesis proposes that fragmentation per se –more discontinuous habitat distribution but no difference in habitat amount- has no effect or even a positive effect on biodiversity. Studies have looked at its effect on species richness, but its impact on intraspecific genetic diversity is still unknown. In this thesis, I aimed to test this hypothesis using the Glanville fritillary butterfly, which has been extensively monitored in the Åland islands since 1990, as a model system. I studied how fragmentation per se affects genetic diversity of the focal populations, while controlling for the habitat amount within the landscape in the Åland islands. For this, I used an existing dataset for which larvae were sampled during two consecutive years and genotyped for 40 neutral SNPs, and calculated four genetic diversity indices in over 200 habitat patches with relatively high population abundance. Following Martin et al. (2021) protocol, I first defined the scale of effect. Then, to reduce the correlation between total habitat amount and number of habitat fragments, I split my dataset in two sub-datasets. Finally, I assessed for each sub-dataset the differences in genetic diversity between landscapes with different level of fragmentation and total habitat amount. The number of fragments had a neutral effect on the genetic diversity, supporting the habitat amount hypothesis. Moreover, the results suggest that all habitat fragments, even the small ones, are contributing to maintain the genetic diversity of the focal population. The species’ ecology, population dynamics and specific adaptations to a fragmented landscape might have led the Glanville fritillary butterfly to be especially resistant to fragmentation.

The concept of ecological management can be seen tackling the relationship of agriculture and environment, not only from the perspective of limiting the negative effects of farming practices, but also promoting positive actions. This notion of managing and maintaining, rather than leaving alone, is currently in the core of biodiversity promotion in agricultural landscapes in Europe. The focus of this thesis are the perceptions Finnish agri-environmental actors have regarding ecological management innovation stemming from the grassroots. In this thesis I assess how i) Finnish agri-environmental actors perceive grassroots innovation, ii) weigh its barriers and enabling factors, as well as iii) envision further needs regarding these innovations. The study is based on a mixed-methods approach using both qualitative and quantitative data; a questionnaire and two focus group discussions conducted during a two-day seminar “Managing Nature - working together” 29.11.-30.11.2016 in Turku. The study was conducted in co-operation with the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), University of Helsinki Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry and a Horizon2020 project HNV-Link. I approached the research questions using an iterative approach, and my analysis is guided by Grounded Theory in constant comparative analysis and generating theory. The results indicate that Finnish agricultural actors acknowledge the heterogeneous nature of grassroots actors in agricultural areas. However, several common attributes are linked to innovation stemming from the grassroots such as practical, economic and local. Currently bureaucracy, lack of cooperation and the changes and challenges in the socio-cultural environment of grassroots hinder ecological management grassroots innovation. Finnish agri-environmental actors acknowledge that the challenges biodiversity in agricultural areas face, are of such magnitude that the need is rather to expand, not narrow down the actor-base for innovation.