Disruptive Innovation: Inclusion of Geodiversity for a Truely Holistic Approach to Nature Protection, Management and Outreach

With heightened awareness of the biodiversity crisis and a changing climate, scientific and policy commentary increasingly calls for taking an integrated approach to the natural world, often referring to both biodiversity and ecosystems. Despite this, a crucial aspect of nature, that of geodiversity, is largely invisible to society today. Outside the geoscientific realm, many engaged with the protection and management of nature consider that abiotic nature is always directly or indirectly factored in, particularly when mention of ecosystems has been made. Practical experience within the Chablais UNESCO Global Geopark, in which areas are recognised by different international and national nature designations, does not support these assumptions. Field experience demonstrates that these generalisations are not only incomplete, having excluded important abiotic features, processes and cycles, but completely overlook the different temporal and spatial scales on which geodiversity operates.

Furthermore, natural heritage protection and outreach approaches often refer in articles or management documents to using a holistic approach when for example, only biodiversity and water, or alternatively only biodiversity and soils, are taken into account. This simplification of the facets of abiotic nature further highlights the low understanding of what constitutes geodiversity, and its significant role in interconnected and interdependent natural world.

Initiatives have been undertaken to build systematic and explicit inclusion of geodiversity into both management actions, as well as outreach and community projects, with the overarching objective of restoring and protecting nature, promoting habitat connectivity and mosaics, and in turn improving climate change resilience.