Considering people in systematic conservation planning: insights from land system science

Abstract

Species and ecosystems worldwide continue to decline and disappear in spite of decades of investment in conservation efforts. Systematic conservation planning (SCP) is a field of study designed to improve conservation programs by identifying land configurations that, if protected, would most efficiently sustain biodiversity. Despite contributing to species persistence in landscapes, SCP has been criticized for replacing site‐based conservation plans that often consider social context. In contrast, land system science (LSS), an emerging field that explores the process of land‐use and land‐cover change, integrates social systems and processes into conservation analyses. We suggest that by incorporating insights from LSS on social processes (eg livelihood adaptation or agricultural intensification), SCP can enhance the legitimacy of conservation plans, thereby reducing the gap between conservation planning and implementation. This represents a necessary first step for SCP to reinvent itself as a decision‐support tool that helps to reconcile the long‐standing divide between landscape‐level species conservation and social needs.

Synergies between the key biodiversity area and systematic conservation planning approaches

“…This has obvious advantages, as although rapid systematic conservation planning analyses can provide important information (Smith, Goodman, & Matthews, ), collecting the necessary data for a full spatial conservation prioritization takes considerable time and resources (Bottrill & Pressey, ). However, a spatial prioritization will still be needed to identify priority areas for meeting the other environmental objectives, using complementarity‐based algorithms to select the KBA elements and other features that best meet conservation management targets for developing functional landscapes and seascapes (Iwamura, Waroux, & Mascia, ; Knight et al., ; Sayer, Carr, & Darwall, ). Donors, policy makers and management agencies with a KBA conservation remit should also use spatial conservation prioritization to decide which KBAs should be priorities for investment, based on factors such as the number and type of conservation features they contain, the relative importance of the site for those features, threats to the site, and management costs and opportunities.…”

Conservation planning for people and nature in a Chilean biodiversity hotspot

“…To respond to environmental threats, such as habitat loss, climate change and land-use change, international conservation policy (CBD, 2010;IPBES, 2019;United Nations, 2015) has made important calls to expand protected area networks by establishing new reserves or enlarging existing ones to improve ecosystem representation, increase connectivity and expand the coverage of areas important for biodiversity and ecosystem services (Aycrigg et al, 2013;Rodrigues et al, 2004). The consideration of ecological and social objectives in conservation decision making can help increase the flow of benefits to people and thereby improve wellbeing (Iwamura et al, 2018;Lanzas et al, 2019).…”

“…To respond to environmental threats, such as habitat loss, climate change and land‐use change, international conservation policy (CBD, 2010; IPBES, 2019; United Nations, 2015) has made important calls to expand protected area networks by establishing new reserves or enlarging existing ones to improve ecosystem representation, increase connectivity and expand the coverage of areas important for biodiversity and ecosystem services (Aycrigg et al., 2013; Rodrigues et al., 2004). The consideration of ecological and social objectives in conservation decision making can help increase the flow of benefits to people and thereby improve wellbeing (Iwamura et al., 2018; Lanzas et al., 2019). However, optimising the spatial configuration of the expansion of protected area networks for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services is a challenge, given limited resources and information (Palomo et al., 2014), and compounded by increasing threats to biodiversity and conflicting societal and economic interests for land use (Remme & Schröter, 2016).…”

Biodiversity hotspots are insufficient in capturing range‐restricted species

“…The implementation of these analyses is not straightforward; it requires heavy data support and sophisticated optimization algorithms. Therefore, by integrating insights from land system science into SCP, the effectiveness of SCP in biodiversity conservation could be greatly improved (Iwamura, le Polain de Waroux, & Mascia, 2018). For example, Marxan and Zonation are the two most popularly used decision-support software tools that adopt a complementarity-based method to select land areas for conservation.…”

“…In addition, the land system science (Turner, Lambin, & Reenberg, 2007) integrates social processes including land-use and land-cover change into conservation planning and helps reconcile the enduring disparity between conservation actions and socio-economic developments. Therefore, by integrating insights from land system science into SCP, the effectiveness of SCP in biodiversity conservation could be greatly improved (Iwamura, le Polain de Waroux, & Mascia, 2018).…”