Title
Wilderness forms and their implications for global environmental policy and conservation
Author(s)
Pérez-Hämmerle, Katharina-Victoria; Moon, Katie; Venegas-Li, Rubén; Maxwell, Sean; Simmonds, Jeremy S.; Venter, Oscar; Garnett, Stephen T.; Possingham, Hugh P.; Watson, James EM
Published
2022
Publisher
Conservation Biology
Abstract
With the intention of securing industry-free land and seascapes, protecting ‘wilderness’ entered international policy as a formal target for the first time in the zero-draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Given this increased prominence in international policy, it is timely to consider the extent to which the construct of wilderness supports global conservation objectives. We begin to evaluate the construct by using recently updated cumulative pressure maps that offer a delineation of industry-free land at a global scale, which we then overlay with maps of carbon stock, species richness, and travel time from urban centers. The resulting variation of these characteristics suggests areas commonly defined as ‘wilderness’ take on different forms, each of which makes a distinct contribution to achieving conservation objectives. Though the construct of wilderness can be used to secure defined benefits in specific contexts, any application of the construct must also consider contextual and social implications. By showcasing the diverse characterization of wilderness in relation to global environmental conservation, we demonstrate the importance of a more nuanced framing and application to improve understanding, communication, and retention of its variable forms as industry-free places.
Keywords
biodiversity; carbon; conservation policy; Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); human-nature; intact; remote; species richness
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PUB27228