Just out

Lynne is a co-author on a paper just published in PNAS this week. It is the culmination of Chapter 2’s work on Naure’s Contributions to People (NCP) for the IPBES Global Biodiversity Assessment.

View the press release prepared by the lead author here and the paper here. Lynne's full comment on the paper is as follows:

Dr Lynne Shannon of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, commented on the worrying state of ocean NCPs: “over the past 50 years, overexploitation and increased fishing effort have resulted in declines in potential and realized catches of fish in the wild, begging the question as to how our future ocean will help to meet the increasing demand for food to sustain the increasing world population”. She further noted that “there has been a decline in the regulation of ocean acidification, the regulation of climate and the regulation of natural hazards, both in the ocean and on land. By comparison, other key provisioning NCPs in the ocean, such as provision of materials and medicines have been increasing over the past 50 years. All in all,”, said Dr Shannon, “it is clear that maintaining healthy and diverse ocean ecosystems will be essential to sustain contributions of marine nature to people”.