THREATS to biodiversity conservation: Global impacts of renewable energies and the interaction with other human activities

Renewable energy developments are essential to fighting climate change but we do not yet fully understand their global spatial patterns and impacts on biodiversity conservation. Moreover, they could interact with other human pressures that are already threatening wildlife species. Understanding these interactions, the underlying factor triggering these threats, and their effects on protected areas, especially in areas where more threats overlap, would help us better prioritize and optimize efforts to break free from fossil fuels while also halting the loss of biodiversity. Therefore, this project aims to improve our current knowledge of the threats that renewable energy developments represent to biodiversity and to explore and advance our understanding of the interactions with other human-induced threats to biodiversity. This project will map for the first time, the likelihood of impact of all renewable energy developments using the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of threatened species for amphibians, birds, and mammals. Together with other threat maps (agriculture, afforestation, overhunting, invasive species, pollution, and climate change), obtained from peer-reviewed public sources, this project will identify and assess the interactions between threats through a co-occurrence matrix, and identify areas where more threats overlap. Finally, it will evaluate the socio-economic factors that are triggering all these threats and their effects on protected areas in two contrasting regions, Europe and South America. This project will promote a link between conservation and energy developments, providing relevant information to nature policies, which is both timely and urgent, as human impacts have become catastrophic on biodiversity. It will also have a substantial impact on my career, as new skills in ecological modelling and global threat assessment will complement my previous experience in human-induced threats and conservation biology.