Venter, Oscar, Laurance, William F., Iwamura, Takuya, Wilson, Kerrie A., Fuller, Richard A., and Possingham, Hugh S. (2010) Planning for biodiversity in future climates—response. Science, 327 (5972). p. 1453.

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Abstract

[Extract] Shoo questions whether areas we identify as global priorities for reducing expected carbon emissions and species extinctions—such as Madagascar, Indonesia, and the Philippines—will still sustain high levels of biodiversity after a century of climate change.

We believe that present centers of tropical endemism and diversity are, broadly speaking, likely to remain important in the future. Such centers tend to occur in regions that have remained climatically stable over long periods, such as hyper-wet, cloudy areas in the Andes that have withstood Pleistocene climatic fluctuations (1). Moreover, temperature is predicted to shift at a global average velocity of 0.42 km per year, or 42 km this century (2), whereas our scheme focuses on developing countries that average more than 700,000 km2 in area. Hence, the large scale of our analysis relative to the pace of climate change makes it doubtful that priorities will shift much this century.

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