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Protected areas (PAs) play a crucial role in biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. 1,2 However, ineffective management can lead to biodiversity loss and carbon emissions from deforestation. 3,4,5,6 To address this issue and explore viable solutions, we assessed the impact of PA establishment on avoided deforestation in 80 Southeast Asian PAs using the synthetic control approach. 7,8 Our results show that 36 PAs successfully prevented 78,910 ha of deforestation. However, the remaining 44 PAs lost 72,497 ha of forest, impacting the habitat of 226 threatened bird and mammal species. Effective management of these reserves could have potentially avoided up to 2.07 MtCO 2 e yr−1 in carbon emissions. We estimate that at least $17 million USD per year in additional funding is required to better manage these 44 ineffective PAs and reduce future emissions. Furthermore, we demonstrate that carbon markets have the potential to generate these funds by reducing carbon emissions from deforestation within protected areas. Our findings emphasize that improving PA management is an essential nature-based solution for conserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change. • We used synthetic control approach to determine protected area (PA) effectiveness • 45% of the analyzed PAs were effective in reducing forest loss • Managing PAs more effectively can double biodiversity and climatic benefits • Carbon markets can generate funds required for enhancing PA management Sreekar et al. show that only 45% of the recently established protected areas (PAs) in Southeast Asia effectively reduce carbon emissions and prevent species loss. They estimate that an additional $17 million USD per year is needed to improve PA management, with carbon markets offering potential solutions to bridge this funding gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation has the potential to enable conservation science and practice to keep pace with the escalating threats to global biodiversity, but this potential will only be realized if such innovations are designed and developed to fulfill specific needs and solve well‐defined conservation problems. We propose that business‐world strategies for assessing the practicality of innovation can be applied to assess the viability of innovations, such as new technology, for addressing biodiversity conservation challenges. Here, we outline a five‐step, "lean start‐up" based approach for considering conservation innovation from a business‐planning perspective. Then, using three prominent conservation initiatives – Marxan (software), Conservation Drones (technology support), and Mataki (wildlife‐tracking devices) – as case studies, we show how considering proposed initiatives from the perspective of a conceptual business model can support innovative technologies in achieving desired conservation outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary 1. The governments of Norway and Indonesia are collaborating on a REDD+ partnership that would contribute to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, forest degradation and peatland conversion in Indonesia. Part of this agreement requires Indonesia to implement a 2-year moratorium to suspend the issuance of new permits for conversion of peat and natural forests for forestry or agriculture. 2. This partnership offers an unprecedented opportunity for Indonesia to mitigate its deforestation and carbon emission levels. However, it has also galvanized intense debates within Indonesian society regarding the scope of the moratorium and its consequent environmental and socioeconomic ramifications. 3. We developed a web-based application for evaluating the implications and trade-offs of implementing Indonesia's forest moratorium in Kalimantan. This spatially explicit tool quantifies the moratorium's benefits for carbon conservation and its opportunity costs under alternative user-defined moratorium scenarios. This application could serve as a useful framework for understanding the costs and benefits of REDD+ implementation across Indonesia and other forest-rich tropical nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) provides financial compensation to land owners who avoid converting standing forests to other land uses. In this paper, we review the main opportunities and challenges for REDD+ implementation, including expectations for REDD+ to deliver on multiple environmental and societal cobenefits. We also highlight a recent case study, the Norway-Indonesia REDD+ agreement and discuss how it might be a harbinger of outcomes in other forest-rich nations seeking REDD+ funds. Looking forward, we critically examine the fundamental assumptions of REDD+ as a solution for the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gas emissions and tropical deforestation. We conclude that REDD+ is currently the most promising mechanism driving the conservation of tropical forests. Yet, to emerge as a true game changer, REDD+ must still demonstrate that it can access low transaction cost and high-volume carbon markets or funds, while also providing or complimenting a suite of nonmonetary incentives to encourage a developing nation's transition from forest losing to forest gaining, and align with, not undermine, a globally cohesive attempt to mitigate anthropogenic climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil palm is one of the world's most rapidly expanding equatorial crops. The two largest oil palm-producing countries—Indonesia and Malaysia—are located in Southeast Asia, a region with numerous endemic, forest-dwelling species. Oil palm producers have asserted that forests are not being cleared to grow oil palm. Our analysis of land-cover data compiled by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization suggests that during the period 1990–2005, 55%–59% of oil palm expansion in Malaysia, and at least 56% of that in Indonesia occurred at the expense of forests. Using data on bird and butterfly diversity in Malaysia's forests and croplands, we argue that conversion of either primary or secondary (logged) forests to oil palm may result in significant biodiversity losses, whereas conversion of pre-existing cropland (rubber) to oil palm results in fewer losses. To safeguard the biodiversity in oil palm-producing countries, more fine-scale and spatially explicit data on land-use change need to be collected and analyzed to determine the extent and nature of any further conversion of forests to oil palm; secondary forests should be protected against conversion to oil palm; and any future expansion of oil palm agriculture should be restricted to pre-existing cropland or degraded habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land sparing and land sharing are contrasting strategies often aimed at improving both agricultural production and biodiversity conservation in multifunctional landscapes. These strategies are embodied in land management policies at local to international scales, commonly in conjunction with other land-use policies. Evaluation of these strategies at a landscape scale, for multiple ecosystem service benefits, and multiple elements of biodiversity has not previously been attempted. We simulated the effects of applying land sharing and land sparing strategies to the agricultural zones designated by four future land-use scenarios (reflecting both current land-use and prospective land-use plans) in the Ex-Mega Rice Project region of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. We assessed impacts of each strategy on biodiversity, agricultural production, and other ecosystem service benefits at a landscape scale. We examined whether it was possible to achieve predetermined targets that reflect the aspirations and entitlements of diverse stakeholder groups. We found that the prospective land-use plans for the region would deliver considerably more benefit than the current land-use allocations, and while not all targets can be achieved, additional progress could be made with reasonable and realistic levels of land sharing or sparing. We found that species and forest types sensitive to agricultural disturbance could benefit most if land in agricultural zones was spared and prioritised for conservation. Conversely, land sharing strategies favoured the more widespread and common species, particularly if the area of wildlife-friendly agriculture is increased. However, the effectiveness of agricultural-focused land management strategies is inherently limited by the extent of agricultural zones. While agricultural land sparing and sharing strategies can deliver some gains in target achievement for multiple ecosystem services, we find that they have a limited effect over the benefits achieved by implementing better land-use allocation from the outset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas (including other effective area-based conservation measures) are a cornerstone of biodiversity conservation. Many countries are increasingly committed to expanding protected area coverage to 30%, which requires an increase in global annual spending from $24b to ~$140b (between $103b and $177b). We find that by trading nature-based carbon credits in voluntary carbon markets at the current average market price of $5 t−1CO 2 , 79 countries and territories can expand protected areas without capital deficit, together generate return on investments of $121b yr−1 and sequester 3 GtCO 2 eyr−1. Another 30 countries can meet at least half of their investment costs, and sequester an additional 2.8 GtCO 2 e yr−1. Additionally, we show that protection can extend to 33% of the Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) outside the existing protected area network. Our results point to the largely untapped potential of nature-based climate solutions to accelerate protected area expansion, thereby conserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]