A GIS-based policy support tool to determine national responsibilities and priorities for biodiversity conservation

actions with current knowledge of species distribution ranges and habitats. Species and habi- tats are not equally distributed in and across countries and continents. Some are widespread with a distribution area spanning several countries, while others have a small distribution range concentrated within a single country. The political responsibility for the conservation of any one species is rarely completely clear, which impacts the efficiency of protection measures [1]. Thus far, conservation efforts have been based on the use of red lists, a popular indicator of the threat status of a species and an easy way to define conservation priorities, especially on finer geographic scales. Red lists can facilitate simple explanations of the complex phenome- non of “endangerment” [2, 3], resulting in high public acceptance [4–6]. However, red lists are at best a suboptimal tool for setting conservation priorities in a country or region since a threat status does not always accurately reflect conservation requirements across the entire distribu- tion range [7–12]. A complementary concept is that of national responsibilities (NRs). National responsibili- ties consider the size of the distribution range of a species within a country to be proportional to that country’s conservation responsibilities. Hence, a country covering a large proportion of the total distribution area of a threatened species would have a greater responsibility for the protection of this species then a similarly sized country that contains a smaller proportion of

the total distribution area of this species. A methodological review of the existing approaches to the determination of national responsibilities [13] has shown the drawbacks of existing methods, especially with regard to data needs, comparability across countries, and the disen- tanglement of red lists and national responsibilities. Generally, the concept of national respon- sibility as a spatial prioritization tool takes into consideration the variability of contributions to overall species or habitat viability and persistence across distribution ranges. Hence, particu- lar parts of species or habitat ranges (i.e., areas with high abundance of a species) are more important than others for the global conservation of a species. The concept of national respon- sibility captures the quality of irreplaceability that defines certain parts of a distribution range [14], and serves as a proxy for the global persistence probability of species or habitats when a particular area is lost. National responsibility assessments identify which country or countries should lead conser- vation actions directed at particular species and habitats. Once national responsibilities have been determined, countries can employ additional tools that utilize the available information to select species, habitats, and regions in which practical conservation actions should be priori- tized (Table 1). Hence, determining national responsibilities [36] and conservation priorities (CPs, [37]) allows nations to take action where it is most urgently needed and helps decision makers to

allocate resources efficiently towards species monitoring, management, and protection [1, 38]. For example, this process could support the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the identification of biodiversity targets for developmental programs. Entities such as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the Group of Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), and international non-governmental organizations could use assessments of national responsi- bilities and conservation priorities as a basis for evaluating which regions would reap the great- est benefit from capacity-building efforts [1, 7]. The sheer number of species, known and unknown, makes it nearly impossible to manually determine national responsibilities and conservation priorities across all countries and regions. Such a global assessment would be highly useful for directing international and domestic con- servation policy, and since a manual assessment is not feasible, a tool is needed to automate the process. To be successful, the tool must be able to overlay species or habitat distributions onto biogeographic regions with political boundaries in a geographic information system PLOS ONE GIS-based policy support tool to determine national responsibilities for biodiversity conservation PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243135 December 3, 2020 2 / 23 Information in combination with the manuscript. We used data described and provided from: Metzger MJ. The Global Environmental

Stratification: A high-resolution bioclimate map of the world [dataset]. The University of Edinburgh; 2018. doi: 10.7488/ds/2354 Olson D, Dinerstein E, Wikramanayake E, Burgess N, Powell G, Underwood E, D’amico J, Itoua I, Strand H, Morrison J, Loucks C, Allnutt T, Ricketts T, Kura Y, Lamoreux J, Wettengel W, Hedao P, Kassem K. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world – A new map of life on Earth. Bioscience 2001;51(11):933-938. doi: 10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0933:TEOTWA]2.0. CO;2. The sources for ecoregions, technical descriptions, and digital data mentioned in this source are available from: https://www. worldwildlife.org/pages/conservation-science-data- and-tools IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources). Spatial Data & Mapping Resources. Spatial Data Download. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK; 2020a [cited 2020 November 20]. Available from: https://www.iucnredlist.org/ resources/spatial-data-download IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources). Red List database. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK; 2020b [cited 2020 November 20]. Available from: https:// www.iucnredlist.org. Funding: Y-P L, T-S D, Y-Ch W, W-Y L were mainly funded by the National Science Council of Taiwan under grant NSC101-2923-I-002-001-MY2. In 2014 the NSC was renamed in Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST, http://www.most.gov.tw/? l=en) K H, D S S, R A K were funded by the project SCALES: Securing the Conservation of biodiversity across Administrative Levels and spatial, temporal,

and Ecological Scales, under the European Union’s Framework Program 7 (grant 226852; https:// cordis.europa.eu/project/id/226852, www.scales- project.net). Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.