School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia.
Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia.
Ambio. 2022 Sep;51(9):2007-2024. doi: 10.1007/s13280-022-01724-0. Epub 2022 Apr 10.
Many threats to biodiversity can be predicted and are well mapped but others are uncertain in their extent, impact on biodiversity, and ability for conservation efforts to address, making them more difficult to account for in spatial conservation planning efforts, and as a result, they are often ignored. Here, we use a spatial prioritisation analysis to evaluate the consequences of considering only relatively well-mapped threats to biodiversity and compare this with planning scenarios that also account for more uncertain threats (in this case mining and armed conflict) under different management strategies. We evaluate three management strategies to address these more uncertain threats: 1. to ignore them; 2. avoid them; or 3. specifically target actions towards them, first individually and then simultaneously to assess the impact of their inclusion in spatial prioritisations. We apply our approach to the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and identify priority areas for conserving biodiversity and carbon sequestration services. We found that a strategy that avoids addressing threats of mining and armed conflict more often misses important opportunities for biodiversity conservation, compared to a strategy that targets action towards areas under threat (assuming a biodiversity benefit is possible). We found that considering mining and armed conflict threats to biodiversity independently rather than simultaneously results in 13 800-14 800 km and 15 700-25 100 km of potential missed conservation opportunities when undertaking threat-avoiding and threat-targeting management strategies, respectively. Our analysis emphasises the importance of considering all threats that can be mapped in spatial conservation prioritisation.
许多生物多样性威胁可以预测，并已得到很好的描绘，但其他威胁的范围、对生物多样性的影响以及保护努力解决的能力尚不确定，这使得它们更难以纳入空间保护规划工作中，因此往往被忽视。在这里，我们使用空间优先排序分析来评估仅考虑相对描绘良好的生物多样性威胁的后果，并将其与规划方案进行比较，这些方案还考虑了更不确定的威胁（在这种情况下是采矿和武装冲突）在不同管理策略下。我们评估了三种管理策略来应对这些更不确定的威胁：1. 忽略它们；2. 避免它们；3. 专门针对它们采取行动，首先单独评估，然后同时评估将其纳入空间优先排序的影响。我们将我们的方法应用于刚果民主共和国东部（DRC），并确定了保护生物多样性和碳固存服务的优先区域。我们发现，与针对受威胁地区采取行动的策略（假设存在生物多样性效益）相比，避免解决采矿和武装冲突威胁的策略往往会错过重要的生物多样性保护机会。我们发现，当分别采用回避威胁和针对威胁的管理策略时，独立考虑而不是同时考虑采矿和武装冲突对生物多样性的威胁，分别会导致 13800-14800km 和 15700-25100km 的潜在保护机会丧失。我们的分析强调了在空间保护优先排序中考虑所有可绘制的威胁的重要性。
