Scenarios for Global Biodiversity in the 21st Century

Quantitative scenarios are coming of age as a tool for evaluating the impact of future development pathways on biodiversity and ecosystem services. We analyse global and marine biodiversity scenarios using a range of measures including extinction abundance, habitat loss, and distribution shifts, as well as comparing model projects. Scenarios consistently indicate that biodiversity will continue to decline over the range of projected changes is much broader than most studies suggest, partly because opportunities to intervene through better policies, but also because of large uncertainties.