Summary
The authors developed specific targets for preserving natural and semi natural terrestrial (land) vegetation worldwide to unite various environmental goals. Using a detailed 250-meter-resolution map of vegetation cover, they identified and selected areas crucial for achieving global biodiversity, carbon, soil, and water targets based on international agreements. A strength of this study was that cropland was excluded from the spatial overlay analysis because it is a manufactured environment, and this study wants to only include natural land cover. A limitation of this study is that their spatial overlay analysis did not include marine systems, rather only areas with land cover including forests, woodland, shrubland, savannas and grassland were considered. The authors discovered that preserving around 79% of the remaining natural and semi natural terrestrial vegetation is crucial to safeguard the attainment of globally agreed environmental goals, as any reduction in these areas could undermine their achievement.
Global efforts to deliver internationally agreed goals to reduce carbon emissions, halt biodiversity loss, and retain essential ecosystem services have been poorly integrated. These goals rely in part on preserving natural (e.g., native, largely unmodified) and seminatural (e.g., low intensity or sustainable human use) forests, woodlands, and grasslands. To show how to unify these goals, we empirically derived spatially explicit, quantitative, area-based targets for the retention of natural and seminatural (e.g., native) terrestrial vegetation worldwide. We used a 250-m-resolution map of natural and seminatural vegetation cover and, from this, selected areas identified under different international agreements as being important for achieving global biodiversity, carbon, soil, and water targets. At least 67 million km2 of Earth's terrestrial vegetation (∼79% of the area of vegetation remaining) required retention to contribute to biodiversity, climate, soil, and freshwater conservation objectives under 4 United Nations’ resolutions. This equates to retaining natural and seminatural vegetation across at least 50% of the total terrestrial (excluding Antarctica) surface of Earth. Retention efforts could contribute to multiple goals simultaneously, especially where natural and seminatural vegetation can be managed to achieve cobenefits for biodiversity, carbon storage, and ecosystem service provision. Such management can and should co-occur and be driven by people who live in and rely on places where natural and sustainably managed vegetation remains in situ and must be complemented by restoration and appropriate management of more human-modified environments if global goals are to be realized.