It says these areas of high biodiversity are home to up to a billion of the world's poorest people, who desperately need the land for farming. Nearly 60 per cent of the world's poorest people live in the warm tropics, putting intolerable pressure on neighbouring rainforests home to about half of the world's total number of animals and plants.
Hot spots are where people live, too.
We cannot separate people and wildlife. We have to find a productive balance with nature. It is unrealistic to expect isolated protected areas to carry the full responsibility for conserving wild biodiversity. The Singapore Botanic Garden, founded in 1859, is a supreme example of the failure of the nature reserve principle. This small, protected fragment of lowland tropical rainforest has lost half of its 448 recorded plants over the past 100 years.