Presentation short abstract

Global priority mapping is crucial for better conservation decision-making. We review the global conservation prioritisation literature to better understand how it has changed and what it has achieved, examining the data layers used to consider potential justice implications.

Presentation long abstract

Global priority mapping has been considered as important and necessary for tackling the biodiversity and climate crisis, to better plan and manage conservation interventions. These global priority maps have proliferated over the past two decades, especially with digital technological advances and the increasing availability of big geospatial datasets. However, critics of global maps have also raised concerns around their usefulness and applicability. This is particularly pertinent given the renewed focus on having the right (global) data to calculate indicators for monitoring progress towards the Global Biodiversity Framework targets. Through a review of global area-based conservation prioritisation literature, we examine how this body of work has changed and what it has achieved, particularly asking if having better and more data has led to improved prioritisations. We apply a cluster analysis based on characteristics of each paper such as spatial resolution of analysis, programme used for identifying priorities, and criteria for priorities, examining how this literature (and the resultant maps) has changed over time. We also identify the most frequently used global geospatial data layers and consider how they were used, focusing on what or whose perspectives might have been missed out through the way data were constructed and applied.