Current approaches and future opportunities for climate-smart protected areas
April 8, 2025
Abstract
The Global Biodiversity Framework’s target of protecting 30% of land, waters and seas by 2030 requires critical discussion of where to establish new protected areas. Spatial prioritization — the process of identifying priority areas — has increasingly recognized that climate change will affect the efficacy of protected areas, as species move to track shifting climate niches. In this Review, we synthesize the current climate-smart approaches: those strategies aimed at designing protected areas that are more resilient to climate change. Such approaches include protecting species’ future habitats, protecting climate refugia, protecting areas that facilitate climate connectivity and protecting areas that promote adaptation potential. To implement these approaches, challenges include uncertainty and gaps in underlying data. We provide actionable guidance for applying these climate-smart approaches in different contexts and highlight promising ways to integrate advances in climate change ecology into conservation planning.
Key points
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Conservation planning increasingly integrates a growing breadth of approaches that incorporate the effects of climate change on biodiversity.
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Protecting species’ future habitats by considering range shifts remains the dominant approach, but non-species-specific approaches are gaining traction.
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No single climate-smart approach can account for climate-change impacts on biodiversity, but adopting multiple, even conflicting, approaches could buffer against effects of climate change more effectively.
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Protecting climate refugia can serve as a strong foundation for robust climate-smart protected area networks, which can be supplemented by protecting additional areas to facilitate climate connectivity.
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Climate-smart spatial prioritizations are feasible on land at national to subnational scales where there are detailed data, but in data-poor areas approaches based on metrics of climate change and species traits offer viable alternatives.
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Climate-smart conservation planning could be improved by integrating approaches across spatial scales, promoting transboundary conservation planning, and exchanging ideas across realms.
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Acknowledgements
We thank H. Possingham for providing constructive comments on this manuscript. J.O.H. was supported by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). K.L.S. was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA). S.N. was supported through a QUEX scholarship, a joint initiative of The University of Queensland and the University of Exeter.
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K.C.V.B. and A.P. researched data for the article. K.C.V.B., A.J.R., D.C.D., A.M., D.S.S., J.D.E., J.O.H. and L.K.B. contributed substantially to discussion of the content. K.C.V.B., with help from D.C.D., A.J.R., D.S.S., S.W.K., S.N. and A.D., wrote the article. All authors reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.
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Buenafe, K.C.V., Dunn, D.C., Metaxas, A. et al. Current approaches and future opportunities for climate-smart protected areas.
Nat. Rev. Biodivers. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-025-00041-0
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Accepted: 17 March 2025
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Published: 08 April 2025
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-025-00041-0
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