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  • Review Article
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Drivers and solutions to Southeast Asia’s biodiversity crisis

Nature Reviews Biodiversity volume 1, pages 497–514 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Southeast Asia’s terrestrial ecosystems harbour extraordinary levels of species diversity and endemism, shaped by a complex biogeographic history. These ecosystems, and the species that inhabit them, face mounting pressures from land-use change, deforestation and ancillary disturbance processes, infrastructure expansion, hunting and consumption, as well as climate change and invasive species. The pervasiveness and extent of these threats differ between nations. In this Review, we summarize current understanding of the drivers of species declines. Learning from past lessons, we identify evidence gaps that should be filled to underpin future policy and practice decision-making, and provide actionable insights for overcoming the biodiversity crisis while accounting for the socio-economic realities of Southeast Asia’s rapidly developing countries. A range of conservation interventions are required to protect biodiversity within human-modified landscapes and intact forest areas. Emerging technologies now offer unprecedented tools for monitoring species populations and evaluating conservation effectiveness. Simultaneously, international sustainability commitments are more aligned than ever, with ambitious targets in place for climate mitigation, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity protection. Effective conservation in Southeast Asia requires the adoption of innovative approaches to landscape conservation, proactive community-led forest management, strategies to reduce hunting and consumption, nature-based climate solutions and payments for ecosystem services.

Key points

  • Southeast Asia’s terrestrial biodiversity crisis is driven by multiple interacting and often synergistic pressures — primarily land-use change, infrastructure development and overexploitation — that vary in intensity across the region and call for coordinated, context-specific responses.

  • Effective protected areas require adequate funding, staffing, enforcement and monitoring, while carefully managing unintended consequences such as displaced deforestation and negative impacts on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.

  • Maintaining biodiversity in human-modified ecosystems depends critically on financial incentives, certification schemes and secure land-tenure rights, while the forest patches that remain within the landscape need to be managed collectively to ensure species persistence and movement.

  • Community-led forest management can align conservation and local livelihoods when supported by strong governance, leadership, community capabilities and capacity, and sustained external investment in habitat restoration.

  • Reducing hunting for non-subsistence purposes requires a strong focus on curbing demand for wildmeat, particularly in urban areas, through enforcement to prevent illegal hunting, market closures, and disruption of physical and online trade routes.

  • Solving the biodiversity crisis requires researchers to shift from diagnosing problems to delivering actionable and equitable solutions, with increased focus on forest-risk commodities beyond oil palm, on developing robust metrics to underpin biodiversity credits, and on inclusive collaboration with Southeast Asian scientists, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.

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Fig. 1: Geography of Southeast Asia’s biodiversity crisis.
Fig. 2: Threats to biodiversity in Southeast Asian countries.
Fig. 3: Threat hierarchies, interactions and mitigation.

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Acknowledgements

M.J.S. and N.J.D. are supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Leader Award (to M.J.S.). J.S.H.L. is funded by the Climate Transformation Program, a Tier 3 Academic Research Fund from the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE-MOET32022-0006). D.J.I. is the recipient of a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/W006316/1). T.S., M.J.S. and Z.G.D. are supported by Research England’s ‘Expanding Excellence in England’ fund. We thank N. Dharmaratne for providing relevant data, and L. Banin for helpful feedback on forest restoration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), School of Natural Sciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Matthew J. Struebig, Nicolas J. Deere, Daniel J. Ingram, David J. I. Seaman & Zoe G. Davies

  2. Research Center for Climate Change, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia

    Matthew J. Struebig & Jatna Supriatna

  3. Asian School of the Environment, Earth Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Janice S. H. Lee

  4. Department of Social Forestry and Forest Governance, College of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines

    Dixon T. Gevaña

  5. Fauna and Flora Myanmar, Yangon, Myanmar

    Ngwe Lwin

  6. WILDACT, Ha Noi, Viet Nam

    Trang Nguyen

  7. Natural Resources Institute (NRI), University of Greenwich, Chatham, UK

    Truly Santika

  8. Department of Biology, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia

    Jatna Supriatna

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Contributions

Researching data for article: J.S.H.L., N.J.D., T.S. and D.J.I.S.; substantial contribution to discussion of content: all authors; writing: all authors; review and/or editing of manuscript before submission: all authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Matthew J. Struebig or Zoe G. Davies.

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Competing interests

D.J.I. is a trustee of The Pangolin Project CIO (UK), a Field Science Co-Chair of the IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist Group, and a member of the IUCN Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group (SULi).

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Nature Reviews Biodiversity thanks Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, Rhett D. Harrison and Bea Maas for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Dedication

We dedicate this paper to the late Navjot Sodhi and Tony Whitten; their contributions to highlighting the biodiversity crisis in Southeast Asia and promoting equitable conservation practice continue to be inspirational worldwide.

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

Related links

ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity: https://www.aseanbiodiversity.org/

Bonn Challenge: https://www.bonnchallenge.org

Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber: https://sustainablenaturalrubber.org/

Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: https://www.cbd.int/gbf

New York Forest Declaration: https://forestdeclaration.org/

Paris Agreement: https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement

Protected planet: https://www.protectedplanet.net/en

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, REDD+: https://redd.unfccc.int/

Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil: https://rspo.org/

Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool: https://smartconservationtools.org/

Sustainable Coconut Partnership: https://www.coconutpartnership.org/

UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration: https://www.decadeonrestoration.org

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: https://sdgs.un.org/goals

Wildmeat: www.wildmeat.org

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Struebig, M.J., Lee, J.S.H., Deere, N.J. et al. Drivers and solutions to Southeast Asia’s biodiversity crisis. Nat. Rev. Biodivers. 1, 497–514 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-025-00064-7

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