A new report claims that by protecting just 1.2 per cent of the Earth’s land surface we could save thousands of endangered species
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In a new report, a coalition of conservationists and researchers says that by protecting just 1.2 per cent of our planet’s land, we could save thousands of endangered species. The report identifies 16,825 sites around the world that are considered key biodiversity hotspots harbouring rare wildlife and lays out an affordable, achievable plan for protecting them.
‘Most species on Earth are rare, meaning that species either have very narrow ranges or they occur at very low densities or both,’ said Dr Eric Dinerstein of the NGO Resolve, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Science. ‘And rarity is very concentrated. In our study, zooming in on this rarity, we found that we need only about 1.2 per cent of the Earth’s surface to head off the sixth great extinction of life on Earth.’
To meet ambitious conservation goals, an additional 1.2 million square kilometres of land were protected between 2018 and 2023. However, Dinerstein and his colleagues estimated that the 2018-2023 expansion only covered 0.11 million square kilometres with range-limited and threatened species. For this reason, they go on to say that planning protected areas is crucial, ensuring that we target our efforts and resources as effectively as possible.
To come up with the results and determine the key areas that need protecting, the scientists started by mapping the entire world, using six layers of global biodiversity data. By combining these layers of data with maps of existing protected areas and a fractional land cover analysis, using satellite images to identify the remaining habitat available to rare and threatened species, the scientists were able to identify the most critical, currently unprotected areas of biodiversity. They called these Conservation Imperatives a global blueprint to help countries and regions plan conservation at a more local level.
These 16,825 sites could, the report authors claim, prevent all predicted extinctions if they were adequately protected. With five countries – Philippines, Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar and Colombia – being home to 59 per cent of the identified sites, the report says that even if we were to only protect the sites found in the tropics, we could still stave off most predicted extinctions. Moreover, the report notes that 38 per cent of these Conservation Imperatives are very close to already-protected areas, which could make it easier to absorb them into protected areas or find other ways of conserving them.
‘These sites are home to over 4,700 threatened species in some of the world’s most biodiverse yet threatened ecosystems,’ said Andy Lee of Resolve, a coauthor. ‘These include not only mammals and birds that rely on large intact habitats, like the tamaraw in the Philippines and the Celebes crested macaque in Sulawesi Indonesia, but also range-restricted amphibians and rare plant species.’
Of course, simply saying we need to protect more land is the easy part. Finding the money to do so is the hard bit. But, the report authors claim that protecting these key biodiversity areas is very affordable. To calculate the price of this protection, the scientists modelled a cost estimate using data from hundreds of land protection projects over 14 years, while accounting for the type and amount of land acquired as well as country-specific economic factors.
‘Our analysis estimated that protecting the Conservation Imperatives in the tropics would cost approximately $34 billion per year over the next five years,’ said Lee. ‘This represents less than 0.2 per cent of the United States’ GDP, less than 9 per cent of the annual subsidies benefiting the global fossil fuel industry, and a fraction of the revenue generated from the mining and agroforestry industries each year.”
‘What will we bequeath to future generations? A healthy, vibrant Earth is critical for us to pass on,’ said Dinerstein. ‘So we’ve got to get going. We’ve got to head off the extinction crisis. Conservation Imperatives drive us to do that.’
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