Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Analysis
  • Published:

Prioritizing India’s landscapes for biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being

Nature Sustainability volume 6, pages 568–577 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

An Author Correction to this article was published on 20 February 2023

This article has been updated

Abstract

Biodiversity conservation and human well-being are tightly interlinked. Yet, mismatches in the scale at which these two priority issues are planned and implemented have exacerbated biodiversity loss, erosion of ecosystem services and declining human quality of life. India houses the second largest human population on the planet, while < 5% of the country’s land area is effectively protected for conservation. This warrants landscape-level conservation planning through a judicious mix of land-sharing and land-sparing approaches combined with the co-production of ecosystem services. Through a multifaceted assessment, we prioritize spatial extents of land parcels that, in the face of anthropogenic threats, can safeguard conservation landscapes across India’s biogeographic zones. We found that only a fraction (~15%) of the priority areas identified here are encompassed under India’s extant Protected Area network, and furthermore, that several landscapes of high importance were omitted from all previous global-scale assessments. We then examined the spatial congruence of priority areas with administrative units earmarked for economic development by the Indian government and propose management zoning through state-driven and participatory approaches. Our spatially explicit insights can help meet the twin goals of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in India and other countries across the Global South.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Schematic of the study framework and biogeographic zones of India.
Fig. 2: Theme-wise results from prioritization analyses.
Fig. 3: Composite spatial priority maps and overlap with extant Protected Area network.
Fig. 4: Priority areas and India’s administrative units.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

All the analyses were based on open source datasets; details are provided in Supplementary Table 2. The input data used in the analyses can be accessed from https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21678518.

Change history

References

  1. Levett, R. Sustainability indicators—integrating quality of life and environmental protection. J. R. Stat. Soc. A 161, 291–302 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Harrison, P. A. Ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation: an introduction to the RUBICODE project. Biodivers. Conserv. 19, 2767–2772 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Otero, I. et al. Biodiversity policy beyond economic growth. Conserv. Lett. 13, e12713 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Seppelt, R., Lautenbach, S. & Volk, M. Identifying trade-offs between ecosystem services, land use, and biodiversity: a plea for combining scenario analysis and optimization on different spatial scales. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 5, 458–463 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, 2019); accessed from https://ipbes.net/document-library-categories

  6. Dinerstein, E. et al. A “Global Safety Net” to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize Earth’s climate. Sci. Adv. 6, eabb2824 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Ostrom, E. A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological systems. Science 325, 419–422 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Bennett, E. M. et al. Linking biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being: three challenges for designing research for sustainability. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 14, 76–85 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Haines-Young, R & Potschin, M. in Ecosystem Ecology: A New Synthesis (eds Raffaelli, D. & Frid, C.) 110–139 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Tallis, H. M. & Kareiva, P. Shaping global environmental decisions using socio-ecological models. Trends Ecol. Evol. 21, 562–568 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Steffen, W. et al. Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 8252–8259 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Wilson, K. A. et al. Conserving biodiversity efficiently: what to do, where, and when. PLoS Biol. 5, e223 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Moilanen, A. et al. Prioritizing multiple-use landscapes for conservation: methods for large multi-species planning problems. Proc. R. Soc. B 272, 1885–1891 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Moilanen, A. et al. Balancing alternative land uses in conservation prioritization. Ecol. Appl. 21, 1419–1426 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Kremen, C. et al. Aligning conservation priorities across taxa in Madagascar with high-resolution planning tools. Science 320, 222–226 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Pressey, R. L., Cabeza, M., Watts, M. E., Cowling, R. M. & Wilson, K. A. Conservation planning in a changing world. Trends Ecol. Evol. 22, 583–592 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Sayer, J. et al. Ten principles for a landscape approach to reconciling agriculture, conservation, and other competing land uses. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110, 8349–8356 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Watts, M. E. et al. Marxan with Zones: software for optimal conservation based land- and sea-use zoning. Environ. Model. Softw. 24, 1513–1521 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Arkema, K. K. et al. Embedding ecosystem services in coastal planning leads to better outcomes for people and nature. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA` 112, 7390–7395 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Wyborn, C. & Evans, M. C. Conservation needs to break free from global priority mapping. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 5, 1322–1324 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Jenkins, C. N., Pimm, S. L. & Joppa, L. N. Global patterns of terrestrial vertebrate diversity and conservation. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110, e2602–e2610 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Brum, F. T. et al. Global priorities for conservation across multiple dimensions of mammalian diversity. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 114, 7641–7646 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Silveira, F. A. et al. Biome Awareness Disparity is BAD for tropical ecosystem conservation and restoration. J. Appl. Ecol. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14060 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Bond, W. J. & Parr, C. L. Beyond the forest edge: ecology, diversity and conservation of the grassy biomes. Biol. Conserv. 143, 2395–2404 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Veach, V., Di Minin, E., Pouzols, F. M. & Moilanen, A. Species richness as criterion for global conservation area placement leads to large losses in coverage of biodiversity. Divers. Distrib. 23, 715–726 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Venter, O. et al. Targeting global protected area expansion for imperiled biodiversity. PLoS Biol. 12, e1001891 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Potapov, P. et al. The last frontiers of wilderness: tracking loss of intact forest landscapes from 2000 to 2013. Sci. Adv. 3, e1600821 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Jung, M. et al. Areas of global importance for conserving terrestrial biodiversity, carbon and water. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 5, 1499–1509 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. First Draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (CBD, 2021); accessed from www.cbd.int/conferences/post2020

  30. Westgate, M. J., Barton, P. S., Lane, P. W. & Lindenmayer, D. B. Global meta-analysis reveals low consistency of biodiversity congruence relationships. Nat. Commun. 5, 3899 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  31. Cadotte, M. W. & Tucker, C. M. Difficult decisions: strategies for conservation prioritization when taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity are not spatially congruent. Biol. Conserv. 225, 128–133 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Madhusudhan, M. D. & Vanak, A. T. (2022). Mapping the distribution and extent of India’s semi-arid open natural ecosystems. Journal of Biogeography 00, 1–11; https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14471

  33. Wastelands Atlas of India 2019 (Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development and the National Remote Sensing Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation, Department of Space, Government of India, 2019); www.dolr.gov.in/documents/wasteland-atlas-of-india

  34. Krishnaswamy, J., John, R. & Joseph, S. Consistent response of vegetation dynamics to recent climate change in tropical mountain regions. Glob. Change Biol. 20, 203–215 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Parida, B. R., Pandey, A. C. & Patel, N. R. Greening and browning trends of vegetation in India and their responses to climatic and non-climatic drivers. Climate 8, 92 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Piao, S. et al. Characteristics, drivers and feedbacks of global greening. Nat. Rev. Earth Environ. 1, 14–27 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Martin, D. A. et al. Land-use trajectories for sustainable land system transformations: identifying leverage points in a global biodiversity hotspot. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2107747119 (2022).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  38. Pandit, M. K. & Grumbine, R. E. Potential effects of ongoing and proposed hydropower development on terrestrial biological diversity in the Indian Himalaya. Conserv. Biol. 26, 1061–1071 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Nayak, R. et al. Bits and pieces: forest fragmentation by linear intrusions in India. Land Use Policy 99, 104619 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Srinivasan, U. et al. Oil palm cultivation can be expanded while sparing biodiversity in India. Nat. Food 2, 442–447 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Vasudev, D., Goswami, V. R., Srinivas, N., Syiem, B. L. N. & Sarma, A. Identifying important connectivity areas for the wide‐ranging Asian elephant across conservation landscapes of Northeast India. Divers. Distrib. 27, 2510–2526 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Goswami, V. R., Vasudev, D., Joshi, B., Hait, P. & Sharma, P. Coupled effects of climatic forcing and the human footprint on wildlife movement and space use in a dynamic floodplain landscape. Sci. Total Environ. 758, 144000 (2021).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  43. Rodrigues, R. G., Srivathsa, A. & Vasudev, D. Dog in the matrix: envisioning countrywide connectivity conservation for an endangered carnivore. J. Appl. Ecol. 59, 223–237 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Ghosh-Harihar, M. et al. Protected areas and biodiversity conservation in India. Biol. Conserv. 237, 114–124 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Hesselbarth, M. H., Sciaini, M., With, K. A., Wiegand, K. & Nowosad, J. landscapemetrics: an open‐source R tool to calculate landscape metrics. Ecography 42, 1648–1657 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Brennan, A. et al. Functional connectivity of the world’s protected areas. Science 376, 1101–1104 (2022).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  47. Alves-Pinto, H. et al. Opportunities and challenges of other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) for biodiversity conservation. Perspect. Ecol. Conserv. 19, 115–120 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  48. Joshi, A. A., Sankaran, M. & Ratnam, J. ‘Foresting’ the grassland: historical management legacies in forest-grassland mosaics in southern India, and lessons for the conservation of tropical grassy biomes. Biol. Conserv. 224, 144–152 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Chisholm, R. A. Trade-offs between ecosystem services: water and carbon in a biodiversity hotspot. Ecol. Econ. 69, 1973–1987 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Clark, B., DeFries, R. & Krishnaswamy, J. India’s commitments to increase tree and forest cover: consequences for water supply and agriculture production within the Central Indian Highlands. Water 13, 959 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Paul, S., Ghosh, S., Rajendran, K. & Murtugudde, R. Moisture supply from the Western Ghats forests to water deficit east coast of India. Geophys. Res. Lett. 45, 4337–4344 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Almond, R. E. A, Grooten, M., Juffe Bignoli, D. & Petersen, T. (eds) Living Planet Report 2022—Building a Nature-Positive Society (WWF, 2022).

  53. Srivathsa, A. et al. Opportunities for prioritizing and expanding conservation enterprise in India using a guild of carnivores as flagships. Environ. Res. Lett. 15, 064009 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  54. Vira, B. et al., Negotiating trade-offs: choices about ecosystem services for poverty alleviation. Econ. Polit. Wkly 67–75 (2012).

  55. Ravindranath, N. H. & Murthy, I. K. Greening India mission. Curr. Sci. 99, 444–449 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

  56. Fedele, G., Donatti, C. I., Bornacelly, I. & Hole, D. G. Nature-dependent people: mapping human direct use of nature for basic needs across the tropics. Glob. Environ. Change 71, 102368 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Strassburg, B. B. et al. Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration. Nature 586, 724–729 (2020).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  58. Belote, R. T. et al. Beyond priority pixels: delineating and evaluating landscapes for conservation in the contiguous United States. Landsc. Urban Plan. 209, 104059 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. Bawa, K. S. et al. Securing biodiversity, securing our future: a national mission on biodiversity and human well-being for India. Biol. Conserv. 253, 108867 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  60. Rodgers, W. A. & Panwar, H. S. Planning a Wildlife Protected Area Network in India. Vol. 1. A Report (Wildlife Institute of India, 1988).

  61. Watts, M., Klein, C. J., Tulloch, V. J., Carvalho, S. B. & Possingham, H. P. Software for prioritizing conservation actions based on probabilistic information. Conserv. Biol. 35, 1299–1308 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Moilanen, A. et al. Zonation: spatial conservation planning methods and software. Version 4. User Manual. C-BIG; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/33733621.pdf (2014).

  63. Sierra-Altamiranda, A. et al. Spatial conservation planning under uncertainty using modern portfolio theory and Nash bargaining solution. Ecol. Model. 423, 109016 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  64. Silvestro, D., Goria, S., Sterner, T. & Antonelli, A. Improving biodiversity protection through artificial intelligence. Nat. Sustain. 5, 415–424 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  65. Delavenne, J. et al. Systematic conservation planning in the eastern English Channel: comparing the Marxan and Zonation decision-support tools. ICES J. Mar. Sci. 69, 75–83 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  66. Roy, P. S. et al. Development of decadal (1985–1995–2005) land use and land cover database for India. Remote Sens. 7, 2401–2430 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  67. Champion, H. G. & Seth, S. K. A Revised Survey of the Forest Types of India (Government of India, 1968).

  68. BirdLife International World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA Partnership, version March 2021); accessed from www.keybiodiversityareas.org/kba-data/request

  69. Koschke, L., Fürst, C., Frank, S. & Makeschin, F. A multi-criteria approach for an integrated land-cover-based assessment of ecosystem services provision to support landscape planning. Ecol. Indic. 21, 54–66 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  70. Sarkar, T., Mishra, M. & Singh, R. B. in Regional Development Planning and Practice (eds Mishra, M. et al.) 205–232 (Springer, 2022).

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was catalysed and supported by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India as part of the National Mission for Biodiversity and Human Well-Being. A.S. was supported by the Department of Science and Technology–Government of India’s Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research Faculty Award. M.S. was supported by the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology, Government of India (SERB DIA/2018/000038). We are grateful to J. Zacharias, V. Athreya, P. Bindra, A. Harihar, U. Ganguly, A. Kumar, M. Manuel, S. Babu, A. Kshettry, S. Nijhawan, M. Muralidharan, N. Namboothiri, Y. Jhala, K. S. Subin, S. Datta, M. Sen, S. Madhulkar, T. Thekaekara, V. Vasudevan, I. Anwardeen, S. Sahu, S. Reddy, V. Varadhan, K. T. Subramaniam, C. Madegowda, C. Meenakshi, K. Karanth, P. G. Krishnan, T. Dash, A. Chanchani and A. Bijoor for partaking in discussions on landscape-scale conservation in India. We thank K. Bawa and R. Chellam for their guidance, R. G. Rodrigues, A. Samrat and N. Srinivas for assistance with data processing and compilation, and the National Centre for Biological Sciences–TIFR and Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (part of the Biodiversity Collaborative) for facilitating this study. The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Arjun Srivathsa, Divya Vasudev, Tanaya Nair, Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Uma Ramakrishnan.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Centre for Biological Science, TIFR, Bengaluru, India

    Arjun Srivathsa, Tanaya Nair, Mahesh Sankaran & Uma Ramakrishnan

  2. Wildlife Conservation Society-India, Bengaluru, India

    Arjun Srivathsa

  3. Conservation Initiatives, Guwahati, India

    Divya Vasudev & Varun R. Goswami

  4. Division of Biosciences, University College London, London, UK

    Tanaya Nair

  5. Departments of Biology and Environmental Studies, Macalester College, Saint Paul, MN, USA

    Stotra Chakrabarti

  6. World Wildlife Fund, Delhi, India

    Pranav Chanchani, Arpit Deomurari, Dipankar Ghose & Prachi Thatte

  7. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Ruth DeFries

  8. Amity Institute of Forestry and Wildlife, Amity University, Noida, India

    Arpit Deomurari

  9. Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India

    Sutirtha Dutta

  10. Foundation for Ecological Research, Advocacy and Learning, Bengaluru, India

    Rajat Nayak & Srinivas Vaidyanathan

  11. Network for Conserving Central India, Gurgaon, India

    Amrita Neelakantan

  12. World Resources Institute, New Delhi, India

    Madhu Verma

  13. School of Environment and Sustainability, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bengaluru, India

    Jagdish Krishnaswamy

  14. Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bengaluru, India

    Jagdish Krishnaswamy

  15. Biodiversity Collaborative, Bengaluru, India

    Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Mahesh Sankaran & Uma Ramakrishnan

Authors
  1. Arjun Srivathsa
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Divya Vasudev
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Tanaya Nair
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Stotra Chakrabarti
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Pranav Chanchani
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Ruth DeFries
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Arpit Deomurari
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Sutirtha Dutta
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Dipankar Ghose
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Varun R. Goswami
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Rajat Nayak
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Amrita Neelakantan
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  13. Prachi Thatte
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  14. Srinivas Vaidyanathan
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  15. Madhu Verma
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  16. Jagdish Krishnaswamy
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  17. Mahesh Sankaran
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  18. Uma Ramakrishnan
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All the authors were involved in the conceptualization of the study. A.S., D.V. and T.N. led the analysis. A.S., D.V., T.N., A.D., R.N. and S.V. processed and analysed the data. A.S., D.V., V.R.G., A.N., J.K. and U.R. prepared the first draft. All authors provided critical feedback and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Arjun Srivathsa or Uma Ramakrishnan.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Sustainability thanks Daniele Silvestro, Kayo Murakami and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Srivathsa, A., Vasudev, D., Nair, T. et al. Prioritizing India’s landscapes for biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being. Nat Sustain 6, 568–577 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01063-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01063-2

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing Anthropocene

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Anthropocene