Biodiversity and species conservation are among the most urgent global issues. Both are under serious threat because of human intrusion and as a result, it is likely that present and future projects will affect threatened and endangered species. Thus, it is important to account for these impacts when evaluating and conducting cost and benefit analyses of projects.

The global community has recognized the importance of forests for biodiversity, and has prioritized the preservation of forest biodiversity and ecosystem functions through multiple multilateral agreements and processes such as the Convention on Biodiversity’s Aichi Targets and the Millennium Development Goals. The Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) provides one mechanism for tracking progress toward such goals in three particular areas: primary forest area, protected forest areas, and areas designated for the conservation of biodiversity.

The Regional Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Asia and the Pacific produced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) provides a critical analysis of the state of knowledge regarding the importance, status, and trends of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. The assessment analyses the direct and underlying causes for the observed changes in biodiversity and in nature’s contributions to people, and the impact that these changes have on the quality of life of people.

This paper presents a systematic review of biodiversity/ecosystem services scenario exercises from the Asia–Pacific region. From the limited scholarly literature available, 61 scenario exercises were examined to explore their typology and multiple scenario attributes, including geographic distribution, consideration for influential drivers, choices of ecosystem services, number of alternative futures and temporal horizons for scenario deployment.