Ricerc@Sapienza

Escalating human pressures are driving global biodiversity loss, and this has dramatic effect over the provision of Nature's Contributions to People (NCP). This combined impact on biodiversity and its contributions to humanity means that conserving important biodiversity areas can have a double benefit. But how much do NCP depend on important biodiversity areas? Here I will estimate how protecting areas recognised as having high biodiversity value could reduce the risk of decline of NCP, thus contributing to the achievement of different Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Conserving these areas would protect life on land trough biodiversity conservation, but would also support other SDGs, e.g. SDG 3 (good health and well-being), SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation) and SDG 13 (climate action). I will analyse four scenarios of global environmental change from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6), and evaluated risk to the provision of regulating NCPs, i.e. regulation of air quality, climate, freshwater quantity, and detrimental organisms. I will estimate such risk both within areas of high biodiversity value and other physically similar areas within the same country, to determine the avoided risk to humanity that might derive from biodiversity conservation. For each NCP indicator, I will evaluate whether risk from environmental change is higher or lower within areas of high biodiversity value compared to their counterparts. Identifying the relative contribution of important biodiversity areas to NCP provision will allow to pinpoint synergies between the achievement of multiple SDGs.