In October 2008 the IUCN launched a process for establishing an IUCN Red List of Ecosystems. For most of 2009 and 2010 members of a working group organized by IUCN's Commission on Ecosystem Management and Ecosystem Management Programme focused on developing preliminary quantitative criteria for categorizing ecosystems according to their risk of collapse (i.e. disappearance or transformation into another ecosystem), using a process analogous to that used for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Rodríguez et al., 2011, Conservation Biology, 25, 21–29).

With major support from the MAVA Foundation, and co-sponsorship from the Smithsonian Institution, EcoHealth Alliance, Provita and the Fulbright Program, an ongoing global consultation was launched to test preliminary criteria in a range of ecosystem types and in different regions and institutional settings. Additional feedback will be sought during the IV World Conservation Congress (Jeju, Korea, 6–15 September 2012), with the aim of having a revised set of quantitative criteria available to the scientific community by 2013.

Over the next decade the hope is to assess all the world's land masses and oceans, leading to complete coverage of terrestrial, freshwater, marine and subterranean ecosystems. We anticipate a significant expansion in existing institutional and technical capacity, especially in biodiversity-rich countries in the developing world, for assessing risk to ecosystems and for using this information for conservation decision-making by all sectors of society.

With the generous support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation we will undertake a new challenge during 2012–2014: the IUCN Red List of the Continental Ecosystems of the Americas. Activities will be structured around three themes that can be broadly defined as science, public awareness, and biodiversity policy. The scientific aim will be to assess fully the conservation status of the continental ecosystems of the Americas by developing a series of baselines across the continental distribution of each type, assessing land cover change against these baselines, quantifying the drivers of change, and applying the Red List criteria to ecosystems at the regional and national level. Our public awareness aim is to improve public access to information on the status of ecosystems by creating an online open-access toolbox for housing and analysing scientific data, developing a portfolio of scientific and popular publications, improving public knowledge, and integrating the Red List of Ecosystems with the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and World Database of Protected Areas to enhance biodiversity conservation planning. The biodiversity policy aim is to use the Red List of Ecosystems to engage actively with governments in the region in the development of national Red Lists of Ecosystems, informing regional economic, social and environmental cooperation organizations, and maintaining a high profile at key global biodiversity-related scientific meetings.

By using the experience of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as a model, the present effort has the potential to influence allocation of conservation resources to threatened ecosystems throughout the world, and to influence the policy process of biodiversity-related international conventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (e.g. Aichi Biodiversity Target 5 adopted in Nagoya in October 2010) and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. Similar effects could also be expected at the national level, as public knowledge of ecosystem risk increases and countries around the world implement Red Lists of Ecosystems. An IUCN Red List of Ecosystems also has the potential to serve as an important instrument to guide investments for several Millennium Development Goals, as poverty reduction and improvements in health are dependent on properly-functioning ecosystems that provide important goods and services for human well being. For more information, updates and information on how to become involved please visit http://www.iucn.org/about/union/commissions/cem/cem_work/tg_red_list/