Impacts of global urban expansion on natural habitats undermine the 2050 vision for biodiversity

Urban expansion can impact natural habitats by changing land covers, and then threatening biodiversity. Assessing the impacts of future urban expansion on natural habitats is fundamental for achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of living in harmony with nature. Here, we simulated the global urban expansion from 2016 to 2050 and assessed its impacts on natural habitats at the global, biome and ecoregion scales. We projected that urban land will increase by 280 - 490 thousand km2 from 2016 to 2050, resulting in a loss of 110 - 190 thousand km2 of natural habitats globally. Such loss will affect the threatened species, resulting in nearly 40% of ecoregions (310/825) may fail to achieve the 2050 Biodiversity Conservation Goal in the future. We suggested that special attention should be paid to biodiversity conservation at the ecoregion scale instead of mainly at global or national scale.