Biodiversity is a shared heritage of humanity, as underscored during the Earth Summit in Rio, and the conservation of all life forms is a global responsibility. While the importance of considering all species has been widely recognized through various lenses—such as ecological interdependence, ecosystem stability, genetic diversity, ethical responsibility, and educational value—there remains a need for comprehensive conservation strategies. Integrating species-NCP (Nature’s Contributions to People) relationships into these strategies is crucial, ensuring that biodiversity protection is aligned with maintaining essential ecosystem services. This approach enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of conservation efforts and promotes ecosystem resilience and sustainability. By aligning conservation goals with human well-being, it supports the achievement of global biodiversity targets and fosters a sustainable future for all.
In this thesis, focusing on the Western Swiss Alps, I demonstrated that spatial conservation prioritization based solely on independent overlays of species richness and NCP maps may not effectively promote a win-win strategy for sustainability and achieve the Global Biodiversity Framework targets of the CBD. An overview of the different species-NCP linkages, their associated methods, and the remaining research gaps underscore the importance of improving them to achieve more effective conservation strategies for our natural capital. To develop a unified approach for protecting both species and NCPs, we assessed the relationships between 2,066 tracheophyte and vertebrate species and 17 NCPs. Our findings highlight the importance of considering not only threatened species in conservation management but also all other species to ensure the protection of NCPs. Building on these species-NCP relationships, we developed an innovative framework to predict the spatial distribution of NCPs from individual species predictions for the current period and four future time-scenarios in the Western Swiss Alps. A global decrease in NCP value was predicted for each future time-scenario. On average, spatial predictions of NCPs were highly correlated with those of species richness, but individual NCPs revealed distinct patterns across time-scenarios. This work highlights the potential to predict NCPs directly from, and together with, species predictions in biodiversity assessments, allowing a better understanding and better anticipation of how species contribute to NCP and ensure human well-being.
While this research underscores the critical role of species-NCP relationships in valuing natural capital, future work should include a broader range of taxa to account for hidden biotic drivers like functional and food web connectivity, species niche shifts, and species abundance. Integrating these factors into a global framework will reveal the full complexity of biodiversity-NCP relationships, emphasizing their intrinsic value in supporting a sustainable future.