Climate Change and Biodiversity

Surrey Biodiversity Partnership

Position Paper Series

Climate Change and Biodiversity

Background

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing biodiversity this century. The Surrey Biodiversity Partnership has a vital role to play in addressing this challenge and this position statement sets out how the Partnership will do this.

There is a wealth of scientific information now available which provides a consensus view that the climate is changing and that human activity is a major contributing factor to the speed and nature of that change.

Generally it is accepted that the future picture for our climate will feature warmer and drier summers, with milder, wetter winters. More extreme weather events are also predicted with increased storms more likely, more extreme rainfall events, more windstorms and continuing sea level rise.

Climate change models allow certain predictions to be made but these are generally on a large scale and may change as the climate becomes more unpredictable in the future. for further information and interactive modelling tools and for the scientific detail behind climate change.

Biodiversity

A key element in the management of our response to climate change is how species and habitats respond to the challenges and opportunities that may arise. There are a number of possibilities:

• Changes in the timings of seasonal events, leading to loss of synchrony between species and the availability of food, and other resources upon which they depend.
• Shifts in suitable climate conditions for individual species leading to change in abundance and range.
• Changes in the habitats that species occupy
• Loss of habitats as conditions change (for example the drying up of wetlands), with the loss of the species in them.
• Changes to the composition of plant and animal communities

There are likely to be large scale changes but also smaller scale changes and the SBP through it’s work and the work of its individual partners requires a strategy to support biodiversity through adaptation as well as influencing mitigation measures.

DEFRA have produced the document “Conserving biodiversity in a changing climate: guidance on building capacity to adapt” (Hopkins et al, 2007)

This is a helpful, well referenced document that can legitimately be used to form the basis of a local approach. This strategy will draw heavily on this document.

The principles outlined in the document are listed below and are fully supported by the Surrey Biodiversity Partnership.

• Conserve existing biodiversity
• Reduce sources of harm not linked to climate.
• Develop ecologically robust and varied landscapes
• Establish ecological networks through habitat protection, restoration and creation
• Make sound decisions based on analysis
• Integrate adaptation and mitigation measures into conservation management, planning and practice.
• Ensure the role of micro climates and features that provide them are integrated into landscape scale management projects.

As well as considering the action we take on a local level it is also essential to engage at a regional level through the SE Biodiversity Strategy to ensure the biodiversity resource is as robust as possible given the unpredictable nature of the impacts of climate change.

Maintaining a diversity of semi-natural habitats, increasing the area and connectivitey of semi-natural habitats, addressing the impacts of unsympathetic land uses, and allowing natural processes to shape the ecology and structure of whole landscapes will create the best chance for biodiversity.

The role of the Surrey Biodiversity Partnership is to provide leadership and co-ordination of work to achieve improved biodiversity through the work of individual partners. Examples include:

• Identifying and co-ordinating fund-raising for individual projects as well as landscape scale projects
• Raising the profile of the issues relating to climate change and biodiversity
• Providing robust scientific evidence to support the actions required by working with the Surrey Biodiversity Information Centre on projects to develop robust data including identifying trends in change for species and habitats.

References.

DEFRA (2007). A Strategy for England’s Trees, Woods and Forests. DEFRA, London.

Hopkins et al (2007). Conserving biodiversity in a changing climate: guidance on building capacity to adapt. DEFRA, London.

IPCC (2007). Climate Change 2007, the Fourth IPCC Assessment Report. Web link: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/index.htm

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