Abstract
A growing and more affluent human population is expected to increase the demand for resources and to accelerate habitat modification, but by how much and where remains unknown. Here we project and aggregate global spatial patterns of expected urban and agricultural expansion, conventional and unconventional oil and gas, coal, solar, wind, biofuels and mining development. Cumulatively, these threats place at risk 20% of the remaining global natural lands (19.68 million km2) and could result in half of the world’s biomes becoming >50% converted while doubling and tripling the extent of land converted in South America and Africa, respectively. Regionally, substantial shifts in land conversion could occur in Southern and Western South America, Central and Eastern Africa, and the Central Rocky Mountains of North America. With only 5% of the Earth’s at-risk natural lands under strict legal protection, estimating and proactively mitigating multi-sector development risk is critical for curtailing the further substantial loss of nature.
Highlights
World at RiskPopulation increase, estimated to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 [1], along with gains in personal wealth and expansion of the middle class will continue to promote a rapid pace of development to meet the growing demands for food, water, housing, energy, minerals, and other resources [2,3] (Fig 1)
When development risk is accounted for, the amount of converted lands could approximately double for South America and triple for Africa (S8 Table)
Future development could lead to half of the world’s biomes having more than 50% of their natural habitats converted, and all biomes with over 25% of their natural lands at risk of conversion (Fig 3B)
Summary
Population increase, estimated to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 [1], along with gains in personal wealth and expansion of the middle class will continue to promote a rapid pace of development to meet the growing demands for food, water, housing, energy, minerals, and other resources [2,3] (Fig 1). Previous studies have shed light on the current conditions of natural systems (e.g., refs [10,11,12]) while others have examined the global consequences of future habitat conversion from prominent sectors like agriculture and urbanization (e.g., refs [4,13,14,15]). We expand upon this foundational work and combine the potential impacts from multiple sectors to more comprehensively forecast future global development risk. We examined patterns of high development risk, defined as the quarter of the globe with the highest cumulative threat scores overlapping natural areas, and examined these at-risk areas within geopolitical regions [16] and terrestrial biomes and ecoregions [17] to highlight opportunities for proactive and strategic conservation interventions
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