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Abstract
Water scarcity has largely driven the adaptations of organisms to survive dryland conditions. As a result, there are many animal and plant species and habitats found only in drylands: some semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas are among the most biodiverse regions in the world. Despite the value of such biomes, protected areas in drylands are not representative of all the dryland subtypes. For example, deserts are disproportionately represented whilst temperate grasslands have amongst the lowest level of protection of all biomes at approximately 3.4%. Nevertheless, local communities inhabiting drylands have informally conserved large areas as a by-product of sustainable management practices or cultural beliefs. The drylands offer significant opportunities for achieving both conservation and development objectives simultaneously and in many cases have been shown to do so. The Aichi targets (targets established by Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity at the tenth Conference of Parties in Citation2010) on protected areas could be more easily achieved, or even surpassed, in drylands by legitimising and supporting Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs), and traditional natural resource management strategies. A more nuanced vision of sustainably managed drylands is therefore needed: one that reflects social and ecological realities and provides a framework against which policies and investments can be assessed. Such a vision should be based on the intersection between sustainable land management and biodiversity conservation, which encompasses the following four components: adapting green economic growth to the drylands; conservation and sustainable management of dryland biodiversity; and health as the basis for secure food and water provision; and resilience and risk management in uncertain environments. To realise such an ambitious vision in the drylands requires a strategic and broad suite of actions in the following four fields: innovation, knowledge and science; incentives and investment; governance and empowerment; mainstreaming dryland biodiversity.