From Red to Green: Synthesizing research to create a metric of species conservation success for multiple end-users (Open KE Fellowship)

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species plays a fundamental role in documenting and monitoring the status of biodiversity worldwide and is the respected "go-to" global repository of scientifically-accurate information on species. It is an invaluable guide for conservation practitioners around the world, and has also been used to help guide businesses in their plans for mitigating impacts on threatened species.

The Red List is founded on NERC-funded research and reflects species' risk of extinction and collapse, as well as how this risk has changed over time. However, while a genuine improvement in extinction risk should be celebrated as a conservation success, it may only be a first step towards achievement of a more ambitious conservation goal. Therefore, an IUCN Green List of species has been proposed to document all dimensions of conservation success, including species function within the ecosystem, and incentivise conservation action towards full recovery and preventing future declines. The Green List will become part of the existing Red List, providing crucial new information within the well-established Red List framework.

Once it has been thoroughly tested and refined through this proposed fellowship, the Green List will provide an easy-to-understand, scientifically sound scoring system that communicates how close a given species is to its conservation optimum, as well as how past conservation actions have contributed to species recovery and what the expected outcome will be if those conservation actions continue, change, or are stopped (counterfactual scenarios). The University of Oxford, which will host me during this fellowship, has been carrying out NERC-funded research on the role of species in ecosystem function and counterfactual approaches to assessing conservation success. I will translate these new scientific advances to create a Green Listing protocol in a form that is useful to stakeholders including governments, businesses, and NGOs. This will include: testing initial protocols on Green Listing on a wide variety of species and taxonomic groups in partnership with IUCN Species Specialist Groups; contributing to user guidelines for Green Listing of species; helping to adapt the protocol by incorporating feedback from testing, Specialist Groups and the IUCN Green List Task Force; and leading the preparation of communication materials and knowledge exchange products on the concept.

The United Nations has declared 2011-2020 to be the "Decade on Biodiversity" and as such has identified many biodiversity targets that rely on an objective evaluation of species' conservation status. The Green List would provide the framework to evaluate conservation status in a scientifically sound, easily understood way. The Green List is an ambitious step forward in measuring conservation success, mirroring the ambitious and forward-thinking nature of the Decade on Biodiversity. The UK has long been on the forefront of conservation science and the British government has invested in conservation policy and actions with global impact. The Green List will follow in that tradition.

This project, with its basis in best practice in conservation science and the goal of reaching conservation managers and policymakers worldwide, truly reflects NERC's vision "to place environmental science at the heart of responsible management of our planet". The opportunity to interact with other Knowledge Exchange Fellows, who bring expertise in the areas of business, policymaking, and more, will greatly increase the potential impact of the Green List by providing opportunities to share this work with end-users in the business and policy sectors as well as with those directly involved in on-the-ground conservation.