IUCN Red List of Ecosystems

The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) is a global framework for monitoring and documenting the status of ecosystems. It’s part of the growing toolkit for biodiversity risk assessment and its main objective is to support conservation, resource use, and management decisions by evaluating all the world's ecosystems by 2025.

The Red List of Ecosystems was developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world's leading authority on the subject and the same entity that created the Red List of Endangered Species ™; a global framework to monitor the level of risk of animal and plant species.

With the help of RLE and its partner organizations, many governments and organizations create their own national and regional red lists (generally based on the IUCN categories and criteria), in which they classify the ecosystems under threat within their territorial limits.

History

The Red List of Ecosystems was created when the need arose to carry out assessments of biodiversity at a level of biological organization above species.

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). The initial development of the criteria for the Red List of Ecosystems was based on analogies with the criteria for species and on existing protocols designed for regional applications.

In 2013, the process of creating The Categories and Criteria of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, the base of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, was finalized. That same year, the key document "Scientific Foundations of an IUCN Red List of Ecosystems" was published to provide a consistent, practical and theory-based framework for establishing a systematic Red List of the world's ecosystems.

Until the RLE was officially recognized by IUCN in 2014, to be managed as a Thematic Group under the IUCN Ecosystem Management Commission (CEM), there was no ecosystem assessment system capable of separating risk analysis from conservation priorities.

The Red List of Ecosystems as a tool

Like other IUCN products, the RLE is a key tool that provides a unique opportunity to facilitate the achievement of international conservation objectives and allows assessing an ecosystem’s danger of collapse either globally or by portions developed over a region, country, subnational entity, etc.

This provides a means to make more effective territorial arrangements, minimizing the impacts that the anthropic transformations of large surfaces entail; it also contributes to a better management of the limited resources devoted to conservation, prioritizing those ecosystems with the most imminent chances of disappearing based on their conditions, redirecting toward them the greatest efforts to mitigate the environmental threats that affect them, as well as the creation of effective protected areas that will safeguard them for future generations.

Risk Categories

Collapsed (CO) – 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.

Critically Endangered (CR) – An ecosystem is Critically Endangered when the best available evidence indicates that it meets any of the criteria A to E for Critically Endangered. It is therefore considered to be at an extremely high risk of collapse.

Endangered (EN) – An ecosystem is Endangered when the best available evidence indicates that it meets any of the criteria A to E for Endangered. It is therefore considered to be at a very high risk of collapse.

Vulnerable (VU) – An ecosystem is Vulnerable when the best available evidence indicates that it meets any of the criteria A to E for Vulnerable. It is therefore considered to be at a high risk of collapse.

Near Threatened (NT) – An ecosystem is Near Threatened when it has been evaluated against the criteria but does not qualify for Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable now, but is close to qualifying for or is likely to qualify for a threatened category in the near future.

Least Concern (LC) – An ecosystem is Least Concern when it has been evaluated against the criteria and does not qualify for Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable or Near Threatened. Widely distributed and relatively undegraded ecosystems are included in this category.

Data Deficient (DD) – 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. Data Deficient is not a category of threat, and does not imply any level of collapse risk. Listing of ecosystems in this category indicates that their situation has been reviewed, but that more information is required to determine their risk status.

Not Evaluated (NE) – An ecosystem is Not Evaluated when it has not yet been evaluated against the criteria.

The acronyms of the RLE risk categories (CO, CR, EN, VU, NT, LC, DD, NE) are in English and, unlike others, do not change in line with the language in which the document where they appear is written.

Criteria (A-E)

Two of the criteria for assigning ecosystems to a risk category evaluate the spatial symptoms of the ecosystem’s collapse: decrease in distribution (A) and restricted distribution (B). Two criteria evaluate the functional symptoms of the ecosystem’s collapse: environmental degradation (C) and interruption of biotic processes and interactions (D). Multiple threats and symptoms can be integrated into an ecosystem dynamics model to produce quantitative estimates of the risk of collapse (E).

Red List of Ecosystems Guidelines

Red List of Ecosystems Guidelines are documents that help the correct application of the Categories and Criteria of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, providing information on the development of the protocol and a detailed description of the scientific foundations that support the categories and criteria. To date, two versions have been published:

Version 1.0 (2016)
Version 2.1 (2017)

References

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems (Accessed 4 October 2017). CEM Thematic Group / Red List of Ecosystems (Accessed 4 October 2017).

External Links

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