Biodiversity conservation in a telecoupled world: a framework

Telecoupling is a global process that increasingly dominates land-use interactions and trade. Despite its obvious large implications for biodiversity conservation, how to manage telecoupled forces and how to implement biodiversity conservation policies in the light of telecoupling has received little attention. We propose a framework to identify the spillover effects of conservation interventions under telecoupling. We then use this framework to identify threats and opportunities for biodiversity. The threats are very rapid habitat loss that jeopardizes most land-based conservation interventions. The opportunities are consumer-based pressure on producer for higher environmental standards, green financing and the use of social media for conservation. These opportunities can be very powerful to attain conservation objectives and we call for further research to learn to manage them to counter rapid biodiversity declines causes by telecoupling.