Biodiversity Conservation and Impact Assessment

Biodiversity conservation encompasses the protection, restoration and sustainable management of the variety of life on Earth, from genetic diversity within species to the complex interactions of ecosystems. It responds to accelerating threats such as habitat loss, invasive species, overexploitation and climate change, all of which undermine ecosystem functions and the services upon which humanity depends. Impact assessment provides a systematic framework for evaluating how policies, development projects and land‐use changes affect biodiversity. It combines field surveys, remote sensing, ecological modelling and socio-economic analyses to quantify changes in species abundance, habitat integrity and ecosystem services under alternative scenarios. By integrating spatially explicit data with scenario planning and stakeholder engagement, impact assessments inform conservation prioritisation, guide the expansion and management of protected areas, and shape policies for sustainable land and resource use. Emerging tools—such as environmental DNA, high-resolution satellite imagery and machine-learning approaches—are enhancing precision in monitoring and projecting biodiversity outcomes. At the same time, frameworks that align conservation goals with local livelihoods, equitable governance and global targets such as the Convention on Biological Diversity’s post-2020 framework are gaining prominence. The interconnection between biodiversity conservation and impact assessment lies at the heart of efforts to balance human development with the maintenance of resilient, functioning ecosystems.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent analyses have modelled the global costs and socio-economic implications of providing a conservation basic income to communities living within critical protected areas, demonstrating how unconditional cash transfers could align local welfare with biodiversity objectives at a planetary scale. A macroecological modelling study has quantified the feedback between plant diversity loss and terrestrial carbon storage under differing land-use and climate scenarios, revealing that declines in vascular plant richness could substantially reduce carbon sequestration and exacerbate climate warming. Mapping of threats to terrestrial vertebrates based on expert-derived IUCN Red List data has produced high-resolution global maps of agriculture, logging, hunting, invasive species, pollution and climate impacts, uncovering previously under-represented pressures in biodiversity hotspots and informing targeted mitigation strategies.

Biodiversity Conservation and Impact Assessment publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in biodiversity conservation and impact assessment across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Conservation basic income (CBI): Unconditional cash transfer to residents of key conservation areas intended to align local livelihoods with biodiversity protection.

Macroecological model: Large-scale ecological framework that links species richness and composition to environmental variables such as climate and land use.

IUCN Red List: Comprehensive inventory by the International Union for Conservation of Nature categorising species according to their global extinction risk.

Mean Species Abundance (MSA): Biodiversity intactness metric expressing the average abundance of native species relative to undisturbed reference conditions.

Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs): Scenarios outlining plausible future socio-economic developments used to assess environmental and climate outcomes.

Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs): Greenhouse gas concentration trajectories employed in climate modelling to project radiative forcing and associated impacts.

Nature’s contributions to people (NCP): All the material and non-material benefits that people obtain from ecosystems, encompassing ecosystem services and cultural values.

References

1. A global conservation basic income to safeguard biodiversity. Nature Sustainability (2023).
2. Biodiversity loss reduces global terrestrial carbon storage. Nature Communications (2024).
3. Using the IUCN Red List to map threats to terrestrial vertebrates at global scale. Nature Ecology & Evolution (2021).
4. Conservation Imperatives: securing the last unprotected terrestrial sites harboring irreplaceable biodiversity. Frontiers in Science (2024).
5. Biodiversity modeling advances will improve predictions of nature’s contributions to people. Trends in Ecology & Evolution (2023).
6. Projecting terrestrial biodiversity intactness with GLOBIO 4. Global Change Biology (2019).