What is Ecological Connectivity?
Ecological connectivity is an essential part of nature, necessary for the functionality of ecosystems and key for the survival of wild animals and plant species. Ecological connectivity allows animals, plants, and natural processes to move freely across and through landscapes, river systems, and seascapes. Rapid and increasing human and infrastructure development can create barriers to species movement and cause habitat fragmentation resulting in increasingly isolated areas, which in turn, can lead to species extinction and ecosystem breakdown. The impacts of this are even further amplified as we continue to face the ever-increasing climate change crisis.
Ecological connectivity includes both structural and functional connectivity.
Structural connectivity considers the physical characteristics that support or impede a connected natural ecosystems.
Functional Connectivity considers the interconnectedness of ecological systems that enables the movement of organisms and processes such as seed dispersal, breeding migrations, and genetic exchange.
Ecological Connectivity is defined as the unimpeded movement of species, the connection of habitats and the flow of natural processes that sustain life on earth. (CMS Res. 14.16)
Why is it important?
Ecological Connectivity & Species
Connectivity allows animal to move freely across different ecosystems to find food, water, mates, and new territories and facilitates dispersal enabling gene flow between populations.
Migratory species, in particular, need connected nature to thrive. They require different habitats throughout their lifecycles to access resources essential for their reproduction and survival. They move hundreds or thousands of kilometres during their lifetime, across habitats, countries and national borders, making their conservation status and behaviour good indicators of ecosystem health.
Ecological Connectivity & Climate Change
As we continue to face the ever-increasing climate change crisis, connectivity is becoming even more important to allow many species to adapt and move away from places where conditions are becoming less favourable. Connected nature ensures ecosystems and as a consequence, biodiversity and humans, become more resilient to climate change by providing a stable environment for important ecosystem processes and services, especially when occurring across temperature gradients.
Connected ecosystems can also enhance climate mitigation by acting as carbon sinks and preventing green house gas emissions arising from human activities that contribute to ecosystem degradation and fragmentation, for example from deforestation.
Ecological Connectivity & Human Well-being
Well-connected ecosystems also support a diversity of ecological functions and services that benefit humans. For example:
Food Security Fragmented ecosystems can impede pollinator movement, seed dispersal and soil fertility impacting agricultural production. Well-connected landscapes enhance soil health and crop resilience thereby increasing overall food security.
Water security Ensuring hydrological connectivity- for example through connected wetlands -can protect against droughts by sustaining water availability and enhancing groundwater recharge and can help reduce the intensity and duration of floods downstream by storing floodwater. Well-connected hydrological systems also contribute to ecosystem integrity and stability.
Human Health Spillover, as a result of increased interactions between human-domestic-wildlife is a primary pathway for emerging infectious diseases. Fragmented ecosystems directly increase the risk of this spillover by forcing wildlife to come into contact with people, their farms or livestock. Well-connected landscapes can reduce these potential conflicts and prevent the new ecosystems being established as a result of fragmentation, which can affect disease evolution, behaviour and distribution.
Resilience Fragmented ecosystems are considerably more vulnerable to environmental stressors such as drought, climate change, invasive species and land use change as a result of increasing human and infrastructure development. Connected nature, enables species, ecosystems and communities to become more resilient to these rapid environmental changes by allowing species to respond to range shifts and by providing a more stable environment for important ecosystem processes and services.
Ecological Connectivity & Protected Areas
Although protected areas are considered the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation, many remain isolated and are not connected as part of wider ecological networks. Well-connected protected area systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures are particularly important to mitigate biodiversity loss as they facilitate species movement and migration connecting populations, and maintaining ecosystem functioning.
Ecological Connectivity & Cooperation
Ecological connectivity serves as a powerful tool in leveraging transboundary and cross-sectoral cooperation since it requires the collaboration of multiple stakeholders and sectors to address threats to its persistence effectively. Furthermore, ecosystem processes, and species movements and migration patterns often transcend national boundaries and therefore maintaining connectivity across critical ecosystems requires a unified and collaborative governance and management approaches.
Threats to Ecological Connectivity
- Habitat Loss and fragmentation
- Linear and other infrastructure development: Roads, railways, pipelines, and dams fragment habitats and create physical barriers that restrict wildlife movement, gene flow, and access to critical resources.
- Unsustainable land use: Practices such as deforestation, overgrazing, and resource extraction such as mining, can break up or completely eliminate continuous natural habitats resulting in smaller isolated patches, isolating populations and impacting natural ecological functioning and processes.
- Agricultural intensification: Large-scale monocultures, increased fencing, and heavy chemical use, also degrade and break up continuous habitats, remove natural features and pollute ecosystems, affecting species movement between habitats in search of more suitable habitats.
- Urban expansion: The spread of cities and settlements replaces natural ecosystems with impermeable structures, creating hard barriers that sever links between remaining habitat patches.
- Climate change: Shifting temperatures and precipitation patterns force species to move to suitable conditions, but fragmented landscapes limit their ability to migrate or adapt. Increased fire frequency alters habitat composition and continuity, potentially removing stepping-stone habitats needed for species dispersal.
- Invasive alien species: Non-native plants and animals can alter habitat structure, outcompete native species, and disrupt ecological processes along corridors, reducing their effectiveness for movement.
- Pollution: Air, water, noise, and light pollution degrade habitat quality along movement pathways, making corridors unsafe or unusable for many species further isolating populations.
- Poor spatial planning and collaboration: Lack of coordinated and cross-sector planning results in a failure to account for the importance of ecological networks and ensuring connected land- and sea-scapes in spatial plans, leading to disconnected conservation efforts, competing and conflicting interests and ultimately cumulative fragmentation across nature.
Scaling up Ecological Connectivity
Maintaining Connectivity
- Good and collaborative governance managing for connectivity
- Sustainable development and land use
- Integrative spatial planning
Integrative spatial Planning is a holistic approach that coordinates land use and development across different sectors, government levels, and stakeholders to balance economic, social, and environmental goals for sustainable outcomes.
Enhancing Connectivity
- Designing ecological networks
- Designating ecological corridors (including stepping stones, flyways etc.)
- Protected area buffer zones
- Ecosystem-based approaches
An ecological corridor is defined as a clearly defined geographical space that is governed and managed over the long term to maintain or restore effective ecological connectivity (IUCN guidelines).
Corridors can be continuous or discontinues in the case of stepping stones and horizontal or vertical in the case of aquatic ecosystems. They may consist partly or entirely of natural areas managed primarily for connectivity
An ecological network is a system of core habitats (protected areas, OECMs and other intact natural areas), connected by ecological corridors, which is established, maintained or restored as needed to conserve biological diversity in systems that have been fragmented.
An Ecosystem-based approach is the integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way. It places human needs at the centre of biodiversity management. It aims to manage the ecosystem, based on the multiple functions that ecosystems perform and the multiple uses that are made of these functions.
Restoring Connectivity
- Removing barriers
- Ecosystem restoration
Global Policy Context
The importance of connected nature in supporting healthy ecosystems, conserving species and enhancing human well-being, is increasingly recognised, and is being integrated into international, national and regional policies as an essential foundation for achieving multiple environmental, social and economic priorities.
Timeline of the integration of ecological connectivity into key global polices
Convention of Migratory Species
Over the years, the Convention has taken a number of steps to enhance understanding and delivery in this area. In 2020, CMS COP13, through Resolution 12.7 (Rev.COP13), a definition of ecological connectivity was first approved which was later refined and adopted during CMS COP14 in its first single Resolution specifically on Ecological Connectivity (CMS Res. 14.16). During COP14 the definition of ecological connectivity was slightly modified and the adoption of the Samarkand Strategic Plan for Migratory Species 2024-2032 which includes Goal 2 “habitats and ranges of migratory species are maintained and restored, supporting their connectivity” with Targets 2.1, 2.2. and 2.3 aiming to identify monitor, manage and restore important habitats for migratory species and ensure that these habitats are well-connected and are able to support migratory species throughout their life cycles.
In March 2026, CMS will hold its Fifteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Brazil under the theme “Connecting nature to sustain life”, a revised Resolution 14.16 on Ecological Connectivity that aligns terminology with other MEAs, provides updates on recent developments and ensures a holistic overview of connectivity and its related issues, will be presented for adoption by Parties.
United Nations General Assembly
On April 16, 2021, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 75/271 “Nature knows no borders: transboundary cooperation a key factor for biodiversity conservation, restoration and sustainable use.” This resolution stresses the importance of connectivity “.. in order to maintain healthy and intact ecosystems and habitats, which are needed to conserve biodiversity and to ensure that nature can continue to provide ecosystem services to people” and emphasizes the importance of cooperation in avoiding the fragmentation of habitats and “.. to maintain and enhance connectivity between ecosystems..”
Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF)
In 2022, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted. Recognising the fundamental importance of ecological connectivity for healthy ecosystems and species, for the first time specific language on connectivity was incorporated into its Goals and Targets. Specifically, Goal A, Target 2-restoration, Target 3- protected and conserved areas and Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs), and Target 12 – green spaces and urban planning, incorporate effective and explicit language around ecological connectivity and is further implicit in Target 1-spatial planning.
| Ecological Connectivity elements within the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework Goal A: The integrity, connectivity and resilience of all ecosystems are maintained, enhanced or restored, substantially increasing the area of natural ecosystems by 2050. Target 1: Ensure that all areas are under participatory, integrated and biodiversity inclusive spatial planning and/or effective management processes addressing land- and sea-use change, to bring the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance, including ecosystems of high ecological integrity, close to zero by 2030, while respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. Target 2: Ensure that, by 2030, at least 30% of degraded areas of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine ecosystems are under effective restoration, in order to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, ecological integrity and connectivity. Target 3: Ensure and enable that by 2030 at least 30 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas, and of marine and coastal areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, are effectively conserved and managed through ecologically representative, well-connected and equitably governed systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, recognizing indigenous and traditional territories, where applicable, and integrated into wider landscapes, seascapes and the ocean, while ensuring that any sustainable use, where appropriate in such areas, is fully consistent with conservation outcomes, recognizing and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories. Target 12: Significantly increase the area and quality, and connectivity of, access to, and benefits from green and blue spaces in urban and densely populated areas sustainably, by mainstreaming the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and ensure biodiversity-inclusive urban planning, enhancing native biodiversity, ecological connectivity and integrity, and improving human health and well-being and connection to nature, and contributing to inclusive and sustainable urbanization and to the provision of ecosystem functions and services. |
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
In May 2022, during the UNCCD Fifteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) COP15 Ministers and Representatives gathered for the high-level segment which resulted in a ‘Land, Life and Legacy’ Declaration. In the Declaration, Parties are encouraged to “…avoid, reduce, and reverse land degradation by accelerating the implementation of existing national commitments to achieve land degradation neutrality by 2030, taking into account the connectivity of ecosystems”.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
Following the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which identified land- and sea-use change as key direct drivers of biodiversity loss, in 2023 at IPBES 10, the Plenary approved the undertaking of a methodological assessment of integrated biodiversity-inclusive spatial planning and ecological connectivity. The assessment will cover methods, guidance, tools, scenarios, models, data, knowledge and capacity-building for integrating biodiversity considerations into and promoting connectivity (both structural and functional) in spatial planning, across sectors and scales. It aims to be completed in 2027 and considered by the Plenary at its 14th session.
Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement)
After 20 years of negotiation in June 2023, the BBNJ Agreement was adopted by the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction convened under the auspices of the United Nations. This agreement is the first comprehensive cross-sectoral ocean treaty in decades and is an implementing agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Annex 1 of agreement sets out a number of criteria for identifying important areas, ecological connectivity is one of those criterion.
The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar)
In July 2025, Parties to the Convention on Wetlands adopted the Fifth Strategic Plan of the Convention on Wetlands 2025-2034 (Resolution XV.3). The Strategy recognises the importance of connected wetlands and includes ecological connectivity explicitly in Goal 3.
“Goal 3: Wetlands of International Importance are recognized, effectively conserved and managed and, through designating sites that qualify, there is an increase in area, numbers, representivity and ecological connectivity across the network of Wetlands of International Importance.”