As governments prepare to gather in Yerevan, Armenia, this week for the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP17), new research identifies 13% of Earth's land area as hotspots for biodiversity conservation, highlighting where conservation efforts are most urgently needed.
In their study published in the journal One Earth, an international team of researchers introduces a transparent and reproducible framework for mapping vertebrate conservation hotspots across Earth's terrestrial surface. By analyzing data for 33,604 species of terrestrial vertebrates from the IUCN Red List, the authors combine information on where threatened and range-restricted species concentrate, with key human-driven threats such as logging, agriculture, urbanization, and invasive species. Approximately 13% of the global land area is identified as a vertebrate hotspot, with many of these areas concentrated in tropical regions and broadleaf forests. Furthermore, these critical areas are home to over a third of the global human population, emphasizing the need for conservation approaches tailored to local conditions that protect biodiversity while also supporting people's wellbeing.
The findings are particularly timely as national and subnational governments, local authorities, intergovernmental organizations, and other state and non-state actors prepare to review progress and update their commitments towards the 23 targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, to be met by 2030 in Yerevan.
"Identifying areas that are home to exceptionally high levels of unique biodiversity while also facing threats from human activities provides the information decision makers need to help turn the tide on the global biodiversity crisis," explains Piero Visconti, who leads the Biodiversity, Ecology, and Conservation Group at IIASA.
The approach has several advantages over the original Biodiversity Hotspots approach. The original approach used the number of species found only in a particular region (known as endemism) to identify Biodiversity Hotspots. However, the results can depend on the size of the region and where its boundaries are drawn. For example, the original Mediterranean hotspot extends inland to include mountain ranges that do not necessarily have a Mediterranean climate. The new approach instead divides the land surface into a grid and combines information on how many species live in each area, giving greater importance to species found in only a few places, with information on their risk of extinction. This makes the results less dependent on how geographic boundaries are defined and allows biodiversity importance to be assessed across different areas. The original approach also relied on expert-based checklists for broad regions, whereas the new approach uses spatially explicit distribution maps to estimate how many species are expected to occur in a given grid cell or region.
Another important advantage of the new approach is that it considers seven major threats to biodiversity, including hunting, pollution, invasive alien species, climate change, and different forms of land-use change, whereas the original approach considered only land-use change.
"Our findings show that different parts of the world face very different combinations of threats, and that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to protecting biodiversity. By bringing together information on where species occur and the pressures they face, we can better inform decisions about where and how to invest in conservation," clarifies Jonas Geldmann, Associate Professor at the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen and senior author of the study.
The study shows just how much accounting for multiple threats matters. The locations of biodiversity hotspots change depending on which threats are considered, and nearly one in five hotspot areas worldwide would be missed if only habitat loss were considered.
"Another advantage of our approach to mapping biodiversity hotspots is that it can be updated as new information becomes available. In this study we focus on terrestrial vertebrates, but the same framework could eventually incorporate plants, insects and other organisms, giving us a more complete picture of global conservation priorities," says Harith Farooq, lead author of the study and based at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Lúrio University, Pemba, Mozambique.
The study proposes a new method but currently considers only vertebrate species, for which the required data is available. Future research should aim to extend this framework to plants, fungi and invertebrates so that no species is left behind in our efforts to protect the world's most important areas for biodiversity.
Reference
Farooq, H., Harfoot, M.B.J., Rahbek, C., Visconti, P., Geldmann, J. (2026). Global vertebrate hotspots: Linking biodiversity importance and threat across taxa. One Earth DOI: 10.1016/j.oneear.2026.101866
About IIASA:
The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is an international scientific institute that conducts research into the critical issues of global environmental, economic, technological, and social change that we face in the twenty-first century. Our findings provide valuable options to policymakers to shape the future of our changing world. IIASA is independent and funded by prestigious research funding agencies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. www.iiasa.ac.at
