The High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, an intergovernmental group of 60 countries, champions a global deal for nature and people and has the central goal of protecting at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. The 30x30 target aims to halt the accelerating loss of species, address the biodiversity crisis, and protect vital ecosystems. Scotland is committed to this target and has 17% of its land currently protected and 37% of its seas in Marine Protected areas (MPAs). However, in both environments, this does not mean that damaging activities have ceased.

Climate change is a threat to biodiversity. The magnitude of that threat depends in part on the extent to which a species’ climatic niche will shrink or shift spatially. The magnitude of the threat of climate change is measured in bioclimatic models with a granularity of 1 kilometre. However, many species often respond to microclimates at much smaller scales, down to metres, or even centimetres. Therefore, certain landscapes may offer refugia – local microclimates that remain suitable even as the large-scale climate continues to change – allowing the chance for individual species to survive climate change. Such refugia can be especially important for dispersal-limited species since they provide continued niche availability at local scales.

The choice of which areas of land and sea to prioritise for conservation protection is complex. Setting targets for the coverage of protected areas is only useful if we know what type of protection should be implemented and where, and whether this protection is successful. We must select sites which maximise the effectiveness of biodiversity protection and deliver the most benefits. Understanding the factors which influence the distribution of species across a landscape is an essential step to identifying optimal locations for protection.

Protection areas need to be positioned within the wider landscape/seascape to provide maximum connectivity to enable species movement and to provide a buffer from the drivers of biodiversity loss occurring outside protected areas. In addition, the protected area network needs to be flexible with respect to climate change. Specifically, it needs to cope with changes in species distributions due to a changing climate while at the same time providing refugia for species with limited dispersal abilities.

We need to know how to best measure the condition or success of a protected area. Current monitoring of protected areas is based on the aim of conserving the “status quo” of the biodiversity when the site was first protected. This approach ignores the ecologically dynamic nature of species and ecosystems. We urgently need to develop a method to monitor ‘success’ that can cope with changes in species distributions due to a changing climate while at the same time ensuring that refugia are maintained for species with limited dispersal abilities.