Numerous common gaps… … more or less difficult to fill. Environmental Sciences and biodiversity conservation policies Rio Seminar. August 28, 2008

The gap in training people Universities and research institutes do not have enough trained personnel to provide training that might fulfill the demands of professionals acting and taking decisions related to environmental issues (to reconcile biodiversity conservation and the needs of economical development). Up to 90s, Brazilian scientific productivity was still not very significant, and the recent rise has been due to strong investments in graduate training at Masters and Doctorate levels. Ecology has now more than 35 graduate programs. Since 1995 Brazil has created Professional Masters. Graduate students should be professional, working at governmental agencies, NGOs or private companies. The first Professional Masters course on Ecology and Environment was created only in What about course on Ecology/Environment and Agriculture?

The gap in methodology of research programs In the core of the knowledge construction there are some fundamental problems to be solved: sampling, replication and validation. The produced knowledge was often made on a basis of a single discipline (complexity of problems, lack of multi-disciplinary, and absence of a clear policy, hinders networking and data sharing). In the example of UK, the underlying mechanisms and factors affecting biodiversity remain unclear. Brazil ranks among the top 20 countries in the world. Publication in international journals is still insipient, because the papers are classified as of local interest unique references were identified; 30 of these were accepted into the final review. A lot of data were produced and few were published: Local context? Problem of methodology?

The gap in research programs (discontinuity and priority): the example of Atlantic Rain Forest In 1945 ecological research on Atlantic Rain Forest began because of the epidemic of yellow fever. After that intense production time, a long scientific silence had gone that was justified by the changing interest to the Amazon Forest, and by dissolution of the research team. Only from the 1980s the Atlantic Rain Forest came back to the focus of ecologists : the Atlantic Rain Forest was considered as priority area due to the importance of research on forest under oceanic influence and the importance of the inventory methodology applied. Who does make the decision that an area is a priority area or not? Using what scientific evidence?

The gap in scientific knowledge production and the selection of public policies Why some areas were chosen as priorities instead of others? Because of greater availability of data generated and the research team was best politically placed. The research programs that constitute the framework used to develop evidence are not neutral. The scale of data observation is often consistent with political issues and not with ecological issues. In the example of UK, it is a field centered approach, as the policy, not a landscape scale approach, as the ecological process. Scale dependency issues are not fully considered. A key point in the success or the failure of a policy is whether or not it is adopted, implemented and how. EBP presents a major advantage: the obligation to look for scientific evidence that can support a policy. Is the Evidence-Based Policy studied in the training of people?

The gap in communication between scientists and decision makers After the Rio Summit in 1992, politicians appropriated environmentalist speech, using initially the expression sustainable development, and nowadays sustained development with no scientific evidence or conceptual basis to do it. Conservation biology is a science of urgency, therefore the precautionary principle requires action. Decision makers with their short time for dialogue expect that environmental problems can be rapidly solved to coincide with their own expectations of solutions. Facing these difficulties how can scientists solve such complex problems?