Policy Research Working Paper 11076

# **Abstract**

Biodiversity is essential for ecological stability, human well-being, and economic progress, providing critical ecosystem services such as clean water, food, and climate regulation. However, it faces unprecedented threats, with extinction rates accelerating to 1,000 times the natural baseline due to habitat destruction, overexploitation, pollution, invasive species, illegal trade, and climate change. Effective conservation requires urgent, coordinated global action, as ecosystems and species habitats often transcend national borders. Collaboration among governments, industries, and communities is essential to restore habitats, protect endangered species, strengthen policies, and enforce conservation measures. The challenges of biodiversity conservation are particularly acute in geopolitically sensitive and overlapping regions, including non-determined legal status territories, fragile and conflict-affected situations, and transboundary ecosystems. In these areas, effective conservation is hindered by weak policies, inconsistent enforcement, and institutional fragility. This paper addresses these challenges by providing baseline data to guide conservation strategies. Using newly developed World Bank species occurrence maps based on open-access, date-stamped records from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the study evaluates species richness, endemism, and extinction risks across 35 non-determined legal status territories, 19 conflict-affected countries, 20 fragile states, 18 marine joint regimes, and 311 international river basins. The data sets reveal that these regions host numerous, often vulnerable, species. Biodiversity conservation emerges as a pathway for trust-building and collaboration, aligning stakeholders around shared goals such as climate resilience and sustainable livelihoods. Reliable and comparable data sets are critical for evidence-based planning, fostering dialogue and cooperation among divided groups. The estimates presented in this paper aim to support robust, data-driven strategies to safeguard biodiversity in geopolitically sensitive and overlapping regions, with far-reaching implications for global conservation and international cooperation.

This paper is a product of the Development Research Group and the Development Data Group, Development Economics and the Environment Global Department. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contacted at bblankespoor@worldbank.org.

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