Global efforts to deliver internationally agreed goals to reduce carbon emissions, halt biodiversity loss, and retain essential ecosystem services have been poorly integrated. These goals rely in part on preserving natural (e.g., native, largely unmodified) and seminatural (e.g., low intensity or sustainable human use) forests, woodlands, and grasslands. To show how to unify these goals, we empirically derived spatially explicit, quantitative, area-based targets for the retention of natural and seminatural (e.g., native) terrestrial vegetation worldwide. We used a 250-m-resolution map of natural and seminatural vegetation cover and, from this, selected areas identified under different international agreements as being important for achieving global biodiversity, carbon, soil, and water targets. At least 67 million km2 of Earth's terrestrial vegetation (∼79% of the area of vegetation remaining) required retention to contribute to biodiversity, climate, soil, and freshwater conservation objectives under 4 United Nations’ resolutions. This equates to retaining natural and seminatural vegetation across at least 50% of the total terrestrial (excluding Antarctica) surface of Earth. Retention efforts could contribute to multiple goals simultaneously, especially where natural and seminatural vegetation can be managed to achieve cobenefits for biodiversity, carbon storage, and ecosystem service provision.
SIMMONDS Jeremy;
SUAREZ-CASTRO Andres Felipe;
RESIDE April;
WATSON James;
ALLAN James;
ATKINSON Scott C.;
BORRELLI Pasquale;
DUDLEY Nigel;
EDWARDS Stephen;
FULLER Richard F.;
GAME Edward;
LINKE Simon;
MAXWELL Sean L.;
PANAGOS Panagiotis;
PUYDARRIEUX Philippe;
QUÉTIER Fabien;
RUNTING Rebecca;
SANTINI Talitha;
SONTER Laura;
MARON Martine;
2023-06-15
WILEY
JRC123444
0888-8892 (online),
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.14040,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC123444,
10.1111/cobi.14040 (online),
