English Abstract This report presents the results of applying IMAGE 2 to
assess changes in biodiversity. The organisers of two separate workshops
solicited for these applications. Pre-prints of the resulting papers are
presented in this report. The first workshop 'Managing for biodiversity:
Incentives for the protection of nature' focussed on incentives for
optimising biodiversity. Here, integrated assessment modelling and scenario
analyses were presented as a tool to evaluate different incentives. The
scenarios highlighted that rapidly increasing consumption patterns, rapid
expansion of rangelands to support changing diets and too slow-moving
technological innovations are major attributes of land-use change and
biodiversity decline. It was concluded that scenario studies transparently
highlight the complex systemic interactions and feedback between society and
the other components of the earth's system. In addition, scenario studies
contribute to improving the understanding of changes in biodiversity at
global and regional levels of assessment. The second workshop focussed on
the use of environmental scenarios to determine the current and future
threats to biodiversity. A group of experts on all biomes used the
scenarios and estimated changes in biodiversity. This report presents a
summary of results by the expert team. The results suggests that land-use
change will be the driver with the largest impact on biodiversity followed
by climate change, nitrogen deposition, biotic exchange, and elevated CO2
concentrations. However, large regional differences emerged. Although
local pressures often cause threats to biodiversity, both papers show that
scenario analyses with integrated assessment models can help to define
future trends. The strength of this approach is that the interactions
between different stressors can be determined. Further, the effectiveness
of different policy measures can effectively and comprehensively be
evaluated with scenario analyses.
