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Biodiversity conservation is increasingly being recognized as an important co-benefit in climate change mitigation programmes that use nature-based climate solutions. However, the climate co-benefits of biodiversity conservation interventions, such as habitat protection and restoration, remain understudied. Here we estimate the forest carbon storage co-benefits of a national policy intervention for tiger (Panthera tigris) conservation in India. We used a synthetic control approach to model avoided forest loss and associated carbon emissions reductions in protected areas that underwent enhanced protection for tiger conservation. Over a third of the analysed reserves showed significant but mixed effects, where 24% of all reserves successfully reduced the rate of deforestation and the remaining 9% reported higher-than-expected forest loss. The policy had a net positive benefit with over 5,802 hectares of averted forest loss, corresponding to avoided emissions of 1.08 ± 0.51 MtCO2 equivalent between 2007 and 2020. This translated to US$92.55 ± 43.56 million in ecosystem services from the avoided social cost of emissions and potential revenue of US$6.24 ± 2.94 million in carbon offsets. Our findings offer an approach to quantitatively track the carbon sequestration co-benefits of a species conservation strategy and thus help align the objectives of climate action and biodiversity conservation.

With thousands of projects being built along eight transcontinental corridors, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is driving the global infrastructure boom. BRI is likely to have a sizeable biodiversity footprint as its corridors overlap several priority areas for conservation and 150,000 km2 of critical habitat. Biodiversity safeguards for the initiative therefore warrant scrutiny. Biodiversity safeguards are policies or standards (adopted by regulators, project proponents or financiers) that specify biodiversity impact mitigation measures. Here we examine a key source of safeguards—lending requirements of BRI’s financiers. We compare them with International Finance Corporation’s Performance Standard 6, which is often regarded as international best practice and which requires projects affecting ‘critical habitat’ to achieve a ‘net gain’ of biodiversity through impact mitigation. We find that of the 65 financiers identified (35 Chinese and 30 international), just 17 require biodiversity impact mitigation and 12 require a ‘net gain’. Among those with biodiversity safeguards, 16 are international, and despite the Chinese financiers accounting for over 90% of BRI’s financing (by quantum of investment), only 1 of the 35 we identified has biodiversity safeguards. Because most BRI finance is not subject to biodiversity safeguards, we conclude that potential impacts of BRI linear infrastructure projects may remain unmitigated, despite approximately 369,000 km2 of critical and natural habitat occurring within the 25 km buffer zone of such projects. We therefore argue for urgent adherence to best-practice safeguards for all institutions financing the BRI. An analysis reveals only 17 out of 65 financiers require biodiversity impact mitigation measures, and overall the initiative falls short of international best practices

Natural climate solutions (NCS) are an essential complement to climate mitigation and have been increasingly incorporated into international mitigation strategies. Yet, with the ongoing population growth, allocating natural areas for NCS may compete with other socioeconomic priorities, especially urban development and food security. Here, we projected the impacts of land-use competition incurred by cropland and urban expansion on the climate mitigation potential of NCS. We mapped the areas available for implementing 9 key NCS strategies and estimated their climate change mitigation potential. Then, we overlaid these areas with future cropland and urban expansion maps projected under three Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios (2020-2100) and calculated the resulting mitigation potential loss of each selected NCS strategy. Our results estimate a substantial reduction, 0.3-2.8 GtCO

Ponds and lakes may be common in urban landscapes and frequently have high biodiversity and conservation value. The importance of landscape-scale conservation of lentic habitat networks has recently been recognised, yet little research has been conducted at this scale. Approaches to inventorying lentic habitats at the landscape-scale are needed to support science and conservation. This paper uses remote sensing to inventory lentic habitats across Greater Kuala Lumpur (GKL), Malaysia, characterising their distribution, abundance and type. Remote sensing images were employed to automatically identify and map the distribution of lentic habitats, capturing 1,013 individual ponds and lakes, which represent 74.3 % of the likely total. Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM), a multivariate hierarchical clustering method, was used to develop a typology using physical characteristics extracted from the imagery, yielding six distinct types. The diversity of habitat types was greater in peri-urban and suburban areas (Shannon’s H = 1.68) than in the urban core (Shannon’s H = 1.48), suggesting that urban structure influences the spatial pattern of lentic habitat diversity. Physicochemical and vegetation field data were collected from a sample of each type (n = 60). Comparisons of group membership in the typology produced from remote sensing and field data indicated demonstrable heterogeneity in local conditions within each type, and a lack of consistency between local and broader scale characteristics. Our work shows how inventories produced from remote sensing can provide insights into landscape-scale biodiversity drivers, and contribute to larger-scale conservation of lentic habitat networks. This approach can complement local studies to improve understanding of factors operating at different scales.

Ponds and lakes are common freshwater habitats in urban landscapes, and often have a high biodiversity and conservation value. The importance of landscape-scale conservation of pond networks has recently been recognised, yet the categorisation and classification of pond network spatial structures is missing. Developing spatial methods and tools to characterise and understand pond networks is a critical first step to accurately conserve pond habitats and inhabiting species. This paper presents an inventory of ponds and lakes in Greater Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, characterising their distribution, abundance and type. Remote sensing was first employed to map and characterise these habitats, followed by multivariate cluster analysis to classify and develop a typology of the ponds identified. Physicochemical data was collected from a sample (n=60) of ponds to compare with the remotely sensed pond classification. Results demonstrated that multi-source remote sensing can be highly accurate and effective in inventorying ponds and lakes of varying sizes. A total of 1013 ponds and lakes were identified within the Greater Kuala Lumpur region and were found to be highly environmentally heterogeneous. Typology clusters were driven by land cover rather than local physicochemical variables demonstrating that specific remotely-sensed variables may be sufficient proxies for certain chemical variables. Landscape-scale conservation and management of pond networks should utilise remote sensing tools, to establish pond network structure, and to maintain wide environmental heterogeneity among pond habitats. Incorporating remote sensing tools into pond conservation will ensure that effective pond conservation can be achieved and biodiversity protection can be maximised.

1) .tif files are maps of each country depicting areas that can be protected using nature-based carbon projects. 2) The pixel values indicate the return on investments for trading carbon credits at a carbon price of 5 USD per ton of CO2. 3) The name of each file depict country code according to ISO alpha-3 (https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search). 4) Countries that already protected 30% of its terrestrial area were not analysed (see paper) and therefore not published here. 5) Countries that cannot expand protected areas using nature-based carbon projects were also not published because no lands were identified.

Large-scale reforestation can potentially bring both benefits and risks to the water cycle, which needs to be better quantified under future climates to inform reforestation decisions. We identified 477 water-insecure basins worldwide accounting for 44.6% (380.2 Mha) of the global reforestation potential. As many of these basins are in the Asia-Pacific, we used regional coupled land-climate modeling for the period 2041-2070 to reveal that reforestation increases evapotranspiration and precipitation for most water-insecure regions over the Asia-Pacific. This resulted in a statistically significant increase in water yield (p .05) for the Loess Plateau-North China Plain, Yangtze Plain, Southeast China, and Irrawaddy regions. Precipitation feedback was influenced by the degree of initial moisture limitation affecting soil moisture response and thus evapotranspiration, as well as precipitation advection from other reforested regions and moisture transport away from the local region. Reforestation also reduces the probability of extremely dry months in most of the water-insecure regions. However, some regions experience nonsignificant declines in net water yield due to heightened evapotranspiration outstripping increases in precipitation, or declines in soil moisture and advected precipitation.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the largest infrastructure scheme in our lifetime, bringing unprecedented geopolitical and economic shifts far larger than previous rising powers. Concerns about its environmental impacts are legitimate and threaten to thwart China’s ambitions, especially since there is little precedent for analysing and planning for environmental impacts of massive infrastructure development at the scale of BRI. In this paper, we review infrastructure development under BRI to characterise the nature and types of environmental impacts and demonstrate how social, economic and political factors can shape these impacts. We first address the ambiguity around how BRI is defined. Then we describe our interdisciplinary framework for considering the nature of its environmental impacts, showing how impacts interact and aggregate across multiple spatiotemporal scales creating cumulative impacts. We also propose a typology of BRI infrastructure, and describe how economic and socio-political drivers influence BRI infrastructure and the nature of its environmental impacts. Increasingly, environmental policies associated with BRI are being designed and implemented, although there are concerns about how these will translate effectively into practice. Planning and addressing environmental issues associated with the BRI is immensely complex and multi-scaled. Understanding BRI and its environment impacts is the first step for China and countries along the routes to ensure the assumed positive socio-economic impacts associated with BRI are sustainable.