Prioritizing landscapes to reconcile biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and human well-being in India

Biodiversity conservation and human well-being are tightly interlinked; yet mismatches in the scale at which both priorities 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 countrys land area is effectively protected for conservation. This warrants landscape-level conservation planning through a judicious mix of land-sharing and land-sparing approaches, and co-production of ecosystem services. Through a multi-faceted assessment, we prioritize spatial extents of land parcels that, in the face of anthropogenic threats, can safeguard conservation landscapes across Indias biogeographic zones. We find that only a fraction (~15%) of such priority areas identified here are encompassed under Indias extant PA network, and several landscapes of high importance were omitted in 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.