Open Access

Carola Martens, Simon Scheiter, Guy F. Midgley, Thomas Hickler

• Africa's protected areas (PAs) are the last stronghold of the continent's unique biodiversity, but they appear increasingly threatened by climate change, substantial human population growth, and land-use change. Conservation planning is challenged by uncertainty about how strongly and where these drivers will interact over the next few decades. We investigated the combined future impacts of climate-driven vegetation changes inside African PAs and human population densities and land use in their surroundings for 2 scenarios until the end of the 21st century. We used the following 2 combinations of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and representative greenhouse gas concentration pathways (RCPs): the “middle-of-the-road” scenario SSP2–RCP4.5 and the resource-intensive “fossil-fueled development” scenario SSP5–RCP8.5. Climate change impacts on tree cover and biome type (i.e., desert, grassland, savanna, and forest) were simulated with the adaptive dynamic global vegetation model (aDGVM). Under both scenarios, most PAs were adversely affected by at least 1 of the drivers, but the co-occurrence of drivers was largely region and scenario specific. The aDGVM projections suggest considerable climate-driven tree cover increases in PAs in today's grasslands and savannas. For PAs in West Africa, the analyses revealed climate-driven vegetation changes combined with hotspots of high future population and land-use pressure. Except for many PAs in North Africa, future decreases in population and land-use pressures were rare. At the continental scale, SSP5–RCP8.5 led to higher climate-driven changes in tree cover and higher land-use pressure, whereas SSP2–RCP4.5 was characterized by higher future population pressure. Both SSP–RCP scenarios implied increasing challenges for conserving Africa's biodiversity in PAs. Our findings underline the importance of developing and implementing region-specific conservation responses. Strong mitigation of future climate change and equitable development scenarios would reduce ecosystem impacts and sustain the effectiveness of conservation in Africa.