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| The high incidence of armed conflicts in biodiverse regions poses significant challenges in
achieving international conservation targets. Because attitudes towards risk vary, we assessed
different strategies for protected area planning that reflected alternative attitudes towards the
risk of armed conflicts. We find that ignoring conflict risk will deliver the lowest return on
investment. Opting to completely avoid conflict-prone areas offers limited improvements and
could lead to species receiving no protection. Accounting for conflict by protecting additional
areas to offset the impacts of armed conflicts would not only increase the return on
investment (an effect that is enhanced when high-risk areas are excluded) but also increase
upfront conservation costs. Our results also demonstrate that fine-scale estimations of
conflict risk could enhance the cost-effectiveness of investments.We conclude that achieving
biodiversity targets in volatile regions will require greater initial investment and benefit from
fine-resolution estimates of conflict risk. | |
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