Indigenous Peoples’ lands are threatened by industrial development; conversion risk assessment reveals need to support Indigenous stewardship

Indigenous Peoples are custodians of many of the world’s least-exploited natural areas. These places of local and global socio-ecological importance face significant threats from industrial development expansion, but the risk of conversion of these lands remains unclear. Here we combine global datasets of Indigenous Peoples’ lands, their current ecological condition, and future industrial development pressure to assess conversion threats. To assess vulnerability and risk of conversion, we create an index based on indicators of the strength and security of Indigenous Peoples’ rights to their territories and resources, their representation and engagement in decisions impacting them, and the capital available to support conservation and sustainable development. We find that nearly 60% of Indigenous Peoples’ lands (22.7 million km2) are threatened in 64 countries. Among the 37 countries with the highest threat, socio-economic and political vulnerabilities increase conversion risk, particularly the limited recognition and protection of territorial rights. We suggest strategies and actions to bolster Indigenous Peoples’ self-determination, rights, and leadership to reduce this risk and foster socio-ecological well-being

Supporting Data for A world at risk: Aggregating development trends to forecast global habitat conversion

<p>These data support research described within Oakleaf JR, Kennedy CM, Baruch-Mordo S, West PC, Gerber JS, et al. (2015) A World at Risk: Aggregating Development Trends to Forecast Global Habitat Conversion. PLOS ONE 10(10): e0138334. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138334">https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138334</a>.</p

Tailoring Global Data to Guide Corporate Investments in Biodiversity, Environmental Assessments and Sustainability

Companies make significant investments in environmental impacts assessments, biodiversity action plans, life-cycle assessments, and environmental management systems, but guidance on where and when these tools can be best used, and how they may scale-up to inform corporation-wide planning, is sorely lacking. A major barrier to informed environmental decision-making within companies, especially in data poor regions of the world, is the difficulty accessing, analyzing, and interpreting biodiversity information. To address this shortcoming, we analyzed nine publicly available environmental datasets, and created five globally-relevant metrics associated with biodiversity: habitat intactness, habitat protection, species richness (globally and biome normalized), and threatened species. We demonstrate how packaging these metrics within an open-source, web-based mapping tool can facilitate corporations in biodiversity prioritization of their sites (or their supply chains), ultimately guiding potential investments in the environment

Global human influence maps reveal clear opportunities in conserving Earths remaining intact terrestrial ecosystems.

Leading up to the Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties 15, there is momentum around setting bold conservation targets. Yet, it remains unclear how much of Earths land area remains without significant human influence and where this land is located. We compare four recent global maps of human influences across Earths land, Anthromes, Global Human Modification, Human Footprint and Low Impact Areas, to answer these questions. Despite using various methodologies and data, these different spatial assessments independently estimate similar percentages of the Earths terrestrial surface as having very low (20%-34%) and low (48%-56%) human influence. Three out of four spatial assessments agree on 46% of the non-permanent ice- or snow-covered land as having low human influence. However, much of the very low and low influence portions of the planet are comprised of cold (e.g., boreal forests, montane grasslands and tundra) or arid (e.g., deserts) landscapes. Only four biomes (boreal forests, deserts, temperate coniferous forests and tundra) have a majority of datasets agreeing that at least half of their area has very low human influence. More concerning, &lt;1% of temperate grasslands, tropical coniferous forests and tropical dry forests have very low human influence across most datasets, and tropical grasslands, mangroves and montane grasslands also have &lt;1% of land identified as very low influence across all datasets. These findings suggest that about half of Earths terrestrial surface has relatively low human influence and offers opportunities for proactive conservation actions to retain the last intact ecosystems on the planet. However, though the relative abundance of ecosystem areas with low human influence varies widely by biome, conserving these last intact areas should be a high priority before they are completely lost

A World at Risk: Aggregating Development Trends to Forecast Global Habitat Conversion

<div><p>A growing and more affluent human population is expected to increase the demand for resources and to accelerate habitat modification, but by how much and where remains unknown. Here we project and aggregate global spatial patterns of expected urban and agricultural expansion, conventional and unconventional oil and gas, coal, solar, wind, biofuels and mining development. Cumulatively, these threats place at risk 20% of the remaining global natural lands (19.68 million km²) and could result in half of the world’s biomes becoming >50% converted while doubling and tripling the extent of land converted in South America and Africa, respectively. Regionally, substantial shifts in land conversion could occur in Southern and Western South America, Central and Eastern Africa, and the Central Rocky Mountains of North America. With only 5% of the Earth’s at-risk natural lands under strict legal protection, estimating and proactively mitigating multi-sector development risk is critical for curtailing the further substantial loss of nature.</p></div

Projected future development threat of agricultural expansion.

<p>Area-ranked threat scores based on estimates of fractional amount of agricultural expansion by 2030 extrapolated from 2000–2011 cropland and pasture time series maps.</p

Future global development threat.

<p>Individual sector development threat maps (top and also shown in Figs <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0138334#pone.0138334.g005" target="_blank">5</a>–<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0138334#pone.0138334.g013" target="_blank">13</a>) used to calculate the cumulative future development threat (bottom) identified by binning global lands (except Antarctica) into four equal-area categories with the “High” category defined as the quarter of the globe with the highest cumulative threat scores.</p

Projected future development threat of mining.

<p>Area-ranked threat scores based on number of minerals and geologic materials deposit occurrences and prospects.</p

Projected future development threat of unconventional oil and gas.

<p>Area-ranked threat scores based on basin-level estimates of technically recoverable billion barrels of oil equivalent for unconventional oil, natural gas, and liquid natural gas resources.</p