Key Biodiversity Areas and Important Plant Areas can help build ecologically representative Protected and Conserved Area networks to meet 30-by-30

Joe Langley , Thomas Starnes, Moabe Fernandes, Steven Bachman, Andrew J Plumptre, Olivia Crowe, Laura Kor, Sophie Jago, Fiona Perez, Robert J. Smith, Joseph D.M. White, Carolina Tovar, Iain Darbyshire, James Borrell

Expanding the global network of Protected and Conserved Areas (PCAs) to cover 30% of the planet by 2030 (30-by-30) is mandated in the Global Biodiversity Framework. However, if PCA expansion is undertaken hastily, it risks inadvertently overlooking important species or ecosystems and entrenching existing spatial and taxonomic biases. We investigate, across 28 countries, whether sites identified as important for biodiversity, specifically Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) and Important Plant Areas (IPAs), capture environments and species outside the current PCA network, and thus the extent to which they could help build an ecologically representative pathway towards 30-by-30. We find that KBAs, IPAs and PCAs cover significantly different environments in 23 of 28 countries. Inclusion of KBAs and IPAs in PCA networks could increase mean national environmental representation from 62.4 to 81.4%. Per unit area, KBAs and IPAs were more effective than PCAs at encompassing threatened and endemic species. While PCAs covered the highest mean proportion of species’ ranges (23.4%), KBAs and IPAs together captured the ranges of 919 additional species, 575 of which are threatened and 539 nationally endemic. Encouragingly, comparing outcomes from 2010-2024, we find that cells inside KBAs or IPAs were 4.4 times more likely to become PCAs than cells outside. This suggests that programmes to identify important areas for biodiversity are already influencing PCA placement with potentially improved outcomes for representative biodiversity conservation.