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News in brief 870 Fig. 1: Global areas of conservation importance for terrestrial biodiversity, carbon and water. All 871 872 873 874 875 876 877 878 879 880 881 882 883 Natural climate solutions are high on the UN’s climate agenda, but as biodiversity conservation targets draw closer, we are collectively failing to conserve the world’s biodiversity and halt further global warming. As part of the Nature Map Project, IIASA researchers revealed that managing a strategically placed 30% of land for conservation could yield major achievements, including safeguarding 62% of the world’s vulnerable carbon, 68% of all fresh water, and reducing the extinction risk of over 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate and plant species. The study demonstrates that jointly planning for biodiversity, carbon, and water reveals key broad areas of importance in a single integrated map, thus going beyond any ranking of individual assets. “Our methods, data, and the global ranked maps developed in this study are meant to be used as a decision support tool for conservation initiatives, decision makers, and donors aiming to identify broad regions for investments. The study lays the groundwork for a new generation of integrated planning exercises to inform conservation options across scales,” explains Martin Jung, who headed the study. “Our work shows that when it comes to identifying new areas to manage for conservation, quality is more important than quantity. Safeguarding biodiversity will require strategic placement of conservation interventions using spatial planning tools like those developed for this project and, crucially, requires enabling stewards to effectively manage these areas,” concludes Piero Visconti, a study coauthor. Global areas of importance for biodiversity, carbon, and water Martin Jung: jung@iiasa.ac.at Piero Visconti: visconti@iiasa.ac.at Further info: www.iiasa.ac.at/news/21-biodiversity The pandemic-related drop in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 was likely the largest on record in a single year. While notable, this huge drop in emissions does not provide much information regarding challenges to meet climate targets, because it does not paint a clear picture for the future as societies recover. IIASA researchers examined alternative scenarios of recovering activity levels and the energy demand paired with that. This work started from a bottom-up assessment of changes during lockdowns and then assessed how selectively maintaining certain practices might alter climate mitigation challenges. “Many people have been wondering what the large changes in societies that came with the pandemic and its lockdowns mean for climate change. If societies are just moving back to old practices, then there is virtually no effect. However, if some of the changes in energy-use practices persist, climate mitigation challenges will be affected,” says Jarmo Kikstra, lead author of the study. The researchers examined four different scenarios each with consistent assumptions and changes in energy demand in buildings, transport, and industry. Their results indicate that a low energy demand recovery could help to partially alleviate some of the challenges in the energy transition required to stay on track towards meeting Paris Agreement climate targets. “A silver lining to the COVID-19 cloud is that reaching climate targets becomes a bit more achievable if we can sustain some of the lower-carbon practices forced upon us by lockdowns,” concludes coauthor Charlie Wilson. COVID-19’s impact on energy demand could help meet climate targets Jarmo Kikstra: kikstra@iiasa.ac.at Charlie Wilson: wilsonch@iiasa.ac.at Further info: www.iiasa.ac.at/news/21-COVID19 By Neema Tavakolian  By Neema Tavakolian  Figure: Global areas of conservation importance for terrestrial biodiversity, carbon and water. 6 Options www.iiasa.ac.atWinter 2021