Unequivocal principles for area-based biodiversity conservation
- Federico Riva,
- Nick Haddad,
- Lenore Fahrig,
- Cristina Banks-Leite
Nick Haddad
Michigan State University W K Kellogg Biological Station
Author ProfileAbstract
Recent agreements have strengthened and expanded ongoing international
commitments to protect and restore native habitats. Nevertheless, how
such commitments should be implemented has been historically
controversial, and nuances in ongoing debates are often misunderstood,
hindering biodiversity conservation. We propose three unequivocal
principles that must be central to how area-based biodiversity
conservation will occur in the coming decades. These principles relate
to habitat coverage, amount, and connectivity, and their enunciation
clarifies apparent contradictions in the literature. We explain why
socio-economic considerations that are central to current biodiversity
conservation cannot override these principles. Biodiversity must be
supported everywhere on Earth, especially when considering the right of
human population to access nature and to benefit from countless
ecosystem services.