TY - JOUR
KW - Sustainability
KW - Biodiversity
KW - Environmental impact
KW - Developing world
AU - Arjun Srivathsa
AU - Divya Vasudev
AU - Tanaya Nair
AU - Stotra Chakrabarti
AU - Pranav Chanchani
AU - Ruth DeFries
AU - Arpit Deomurari
AU - Sutirtha Dutta
AU - Dipankar Ghose
AU - Varun Goswami
AU - Rajat Nayak
AU - Amrita Neelakantan
AU - Prachi Thatte
AU - Srinivas Vaidyanathan
AU - Madhu Verma
AU - Jagdish Krishnaswamy
AU - Mahesh Sankaran
AU - Uma Ramakrishnan
AB - Biodiversity conservation and human well-being are tightly interlinked. Yet, mismatches in the scale at which these two priority issues are planned and implemented have exacerbated biodiversity loss, erosion of ecosystem services and declining human quality of life. India houses the second largest human population on the planet, while < 5% of the country’s land area is effectively protected for conservation. This warrants landscape-level conservation planning through a judicious mix of land-sharing and land-sparing approaches combined with the co-production of ecosystem services. Through a multifaceted assessment, we prioritize spatial extents of land parcels that, in the face of anthropogenic threats, can safeguard conservation landscapes across India’s biogeographic zones. We found that only a fraction (~15%) of the priority areas identified here are encompassed under India’s extant Protected Area network, and furthermore, that several landscapes of high importance were omitted from all previous global-scale assessments. We then examined the spatial congruence of priority areas with administrative units earmarked for economic development by the Indian government and propose management zoning through state-driven and participatory approaches. Our spatially explicit insights can help meet the twin goals of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in India and other countries across the Global South.
BT - Nature Sustainability
DA - 02/2023
DO - 10.1038/s41893-023-01063-2
DP - www.nature.com
J2 - Nat Sustain
LA - en
N2 - Biodiversity conservation and human well-being are tightly interlinked. Yet, mismatches in the scale at which these two priority issues are planned and implemented have exacerbated biodiversity loss, erosion of ecosystem services and declining human quality of life. India houses the second largest human population on the planet, while < 5% of the country’s land area is effectively protected for conservation. This warrants landscape-level conservation planning through a judicious mix of land-sharing and land-sparing approaches combined with the co-production of ecosystem services. Through a multifaceted assessment, we prioritize spatial extents of land parcels that, in the face of anthropogenic threats, can safeguard conservation landscapes across India’s biogeographic zones. We found that only a fraction (~15%) of the priority areas identified here are encompassed under India’s extant Protected Area network, and furthermore, that several landscapes of high importance were omitted from all previous global-scale assessments. We then examined the spatial congruence of priority areas with administrative units earmarked for economic development by the Indian government and propose management zoning through state-driven and participatory approaches. Our spatially explicit insights can help meet the twin goals of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in India and other countries across the Global South.
PY - 2023
SN - 2398-9629
SP - 1
EP - 10
T2 - Nature Sustainability
TI - Prioritizing India’s landscapes for biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01063-2
Y2 - 2023/02/07/04:11:41
ER -