Ecological redlines provide a mechanism to maximize conservation gains in Mainland Southeast Asia

Yang Bai,Zhou Fang,Alice C Hughes

doi:10.1016/j.oneear.2021.09.010

Abstract

<h2>Summary</h2> Developing effective targets for conservation remains a topic of global debate. Ambitious targets for 50% or more of the Earth's land surface have been proposed, yet balancing human needs with area-based conservation measures remains challenging. Current global conservation targets focus on biodiversity conservation, ignoring ecosystem services and vulnerabilities. Using China's ecological conservation redline as a basis, here we put forward a framework that combines ecosystem services, ecological sensitivity, and biodiversity indicators (including 10,311 species) to determine ecological priorities across Mainland Southeast Asia (M-SEA). We find that, based on the redline 15.8% of the M-SEA's land would cover all overlaps between biodiversity, service provision, and sensitivity hotspots, and much is already protected. Following this, 32.9% would cover all areas with at least hotspots for two priority facets, and 51% for all priorities. These targets are in line with those proposed in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework to maximize effectiveness of proposed targets.

Highlights

The United Nation Sustainable Development Goals aim to help us navigate our way to a more sustainable life on Earth
It represents a key opportunity to reframe how we develop targets for global conservation,[1] which requires agreement on how to expand the existing protected areas (PAs) plan to reflect different ecological facets and protect biodiversity and ecosystem service provision, which could be implemented in parallel with China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI)
We evaluate the representativeness and gaps of the existing protecting networks and ecological redline areas (ERAs) targeted at Mainland Southeast Asia (M-SEA) for transnational cooperation on multi-objective ecological protection for the shared future

Summary

Introduction

The United Nation Sustainable Development Goals aim to help us navigate our way to a more sustainable life on Earth. Despite conventions and resolutions, such as the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), we continue to see progressive loss of global diversity, which is widely stated as the sign of sixth mass extinction under a consequence of the unsustainable use of natural resources.[1] To address these challenges, the CBD developed a strategic plan for 2011–2020 (the Aichi targets) to provide a set of achievable goals to ensure that, by 2020, adequate measures were in place to protect global biodiversity. Target 11 focuses on coverage of protected areas,[2,3] which has reached 15% of Earth’s land and 7% of Earth’s oceans[4] (still below the goal of protecting 17% of Earth’s land and 10% Earth’s oceans). Only one-third of current terrestrial protected areas (PAs) and one-tenth of current oceanic PAs assessed were deemed to be effectively managed.[4]

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