Looking Back to Plan for the Future: A Short History of Systematic Conservation Planning and Its Increasing Importance in Abating Earth's Biodiversity Crisis

ABSTRACT The Convention on Biological Diversity Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM‐GBF) was endorsed in 2022. This framework was designed to guide biodiversity conservation efforts globally, to not just halt the loss of biodiversity but to improve it. The emerging prominence of spatial planning as a means to these lofty ends is notable in the KM‐GBF, as it requires signatories to ensure that all areas within a country are under Participatory Integrated Biodiversity Inclusive Spatial Planning (PI‐BISP) to bring the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance and ecosystems of high integrity close to zero by 2030, while respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (Target 1). Furthermore, there are spatial planning requirements in at least a further five targets which guide on‐the‐ground management and broader policy for protecting, conserving, managing, and restoring nature. Here, we review the history and context of systematic conservation planning, as a discipline born out of an application (and subsequent publication) by Jamie Kirkpatrick in 1983 across the central east coast of Tasmania. In doing so we consider the planning theory which influenced systematic conservation planning, the tools which have been developed to bridge plans and implementation, and forward‐looking innovations needed to deliver on the KM‐GBF goals.