Systems or species? Approaches to conservation for the 21st century

One of the hot debates in the conservation community is whether to focus on individual species (for example, through species recovery plans, or lists of threatened species) or on systems approaches (such as the ecosystem approach advocated by the Convention on Biological Diversity). This paper will discuss some of the various options, before reaching a conclusion that both approaches are valid and mutually reinforcing, and that the dichotomy is a false one. Perhaps more importantly, no conservation investment is likely to be effective if economic, social, and political factors are driving in the opposite direction. Instead, we need multiple approaches that build a stronger political constituency, new ways of providing knowledge for decisions, better ways of mobilizing information and dynamic approaches that enable us to adapt to changing conditions, and new ways to generate funding for conservation.