Conserving dryland biodiversity: a future vision of sustainable dryland development

Water scarcity has largely driven the adaptations of organisms to survive dryland conditions. As a result, there are many animal and plant species and habitats found only in drylands: some semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas are among the most biodiverse regions in the world. Despite the value of such biomes, protected areas in drylands are not representative of all the dryland subtypes. For example, deserts are disproportionately represented whilst temperate grasslands have amongst the lowest level of protection of all biomes at approximately 3.4%. Nevertheless, local communities inhabiting drylands have informally conserved large areas as a by-product of sustainable management practices or cultural beliefs. The drylands offer significant opportunities for achieving both conservation and development objectives simultaneously and in many cases have been shown to do so. The Aichi targets (targets established by Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity at the tenth Conference of Parties in 2010) on p...