From the Challenges Imposed by Climate Change to the Preservation of Ecosystem Processes and Services

Abstract

Today, especially in countries that offer a satisfactory quality of life, it is easy to forget that we depend directly and indirectly on services provided by ecosystems such as quantity and quality of water, energy, food, health, and shel ter. In less developed countries, the daily struggle for essential goods makes this dependency more real, despite the la ck of knowledge, organization and/or financial resources to deal with the problems imposed on ecosystems by climate and anthropogenic changes. Protecting ecosystems by ensuring the services they provide has become highly dependent on our management capacity, our understanding of its functioning, and our capacity for persuasion. Demographic pressure and individualism compromise the survival of various species, in clud ing our own, and create pressures under governments and the stability of na tions. The notion of facing a global challenge has awakened in the scientific com mu nity the need to focus on developing global strategies that change the mind-sets of decision makers, industry, governments and markets. Global knowledge net works and experts are being built to mitigate problems on a global scale. In this mini review, the authors make a brief visit to documents, intergovernmental initiatives, and platforms that have been built with the aim of contributing to promote a resolution for the global problems.