TY - JOUR
AU1 - Srivathsa, Arjun
AU2 - Vasudev, Divya
AU3 - Nair, Tanaya
AU4 - Chakrabarti, Stotra
AU5 - Chanchani, Pranav
AU6 - DeFries, Ruth
AU7 - Deomurari, Arpit
AU8 - Dutta, Sutirtha
AU9 - Ghose, Dipankar
AU1 - Goswami, Varun R.
AU1 - Nayak, Rajat
AU1 - Neelakantan, Amrita
AU1 - Thatte, Prachi
AU1 - Vaidyanathan, Srinivas
AU1 - Verma, Madhu
AU1 - Krishnaswamy, Jagdish
AU1 - Sankaran, Mahesh
AU1 - Ramakrishnan, Uma
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.
TI - Prioritizing India’s landscapes for biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being
JF - Nature Sustainability
DO - 10.1038/s41893-023-01063-2
DA - 2023-05-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/prioritizing-india-s-landscapes-for-biodiversity-ecosystem-services-QIZVO2afGi
SP - 568
EP - 577
VL - 6
IS - 5
DP - DeepDyve
ER -