Barnaby E. Walker

Editor’s summary Climate change and other massive global changes are increasing the risk of extinction for many species. Two papers in this issue address the extent of extinction risk to plants. Wang et al. used species distribution models to predict range shifts in response to climate change for more than 60,000 plant species. They found that 7 to 16% of these species will be at high extinction risk by 2100 across emissions scenarios. Forest et al.

Introduction There is an urgent need to ‘bend the curve’ of biodiversity loss (Mace et al., 2018), as indicators report widespread and ongoing decline (Tittensor et al., 2014; Haddad et al., 2015; Díaz et al., 2019). Ambitious goals and targets have been set to stem this loss, achieve stabilisation, and build a path to recovery, whilst ensuring human needs are fairly met (Gumbs et al., 2021; Milner-Gulland et al., 2021; CBD, 2021b).

Introduction The distribution of plant species and the delineation of major phytogeographic divisions have been focus areas of biogeographers for centuries (e.g. De Candolle, 1820, 1855; Ebach, 2015).