Conservation planning is crucial for megadiverse countries where biodiversity is coupled with incomplete reserve systems and limited resources to invest in conservation. Using Peru as an example of a megadiverse country, we asked whether the national system of protected areas satisfies biodiversity conservation needs. Further, to complement the existing reserve system, we identified and prioritized potential conservation areas using a combination of species distribution modeling, conservation planning and connectivity analysis. Based on a set of 2,869 species, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, butterflies, and plants, we used species distribution models to represent species' geographic ranges to reduce the effect of biased sampling and partial knowledge about species' distributions. A site-selection algorithm then searched for efficient and complementary proposals, based on the above distributions, for a more representative system of protection. Finally, we incorporated connectivity among areas in an innovative post-hoc analysis to prioritize those areas maximizing connectivity within the system. Our results highlight severe conservation gaps in the Coastal and Andean regions, and we propose several areas, which are not currently covered by the existing network of protected areas. Our approach helps to find areas that contribute to creating a more representative, connected and efficient network.

Limiting climate change to less than 2°C is the focus of international policy under the climate convention (UNFCCC), and is essential to preventing extinctions, a focus of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The post‐2020 biodiversity framework drafted by the CBD proposes conserving 30% of both land and oceans by 2030. However, the combined impact on extinction risk of species from limiting climate change and increasing the extent of protected and conserved areas has not been assessed. Here we create conservation spatial plans to minimize extinction risk in the tropics using data on 289 219 species and modeling two future greenhouse gas concentration pathways (RCP2.6 and 8.5) while varying the extent of terrestrial protected land and conserved areas from <17% to 50%. We find that limiting climate change to 2°C and conserving 30% of terrestrial area could more than halve aggregate extinction risk compared with uncontrolled climate change and no increase in conserved area.