The Intriguing Nexus Between Assessments of Habitat Protection, Governance and Development

The paper explores the nexus between indicators of development (the Human Development Index, Social Progress Index, happiness, employment in agriculture, industry, and services), indicators of habitat and species protection (Terrestrial Biome Protection based on national weights, TBN; Species Protection Index, SPI; Protected Area Representativeness Index, PAR; and Species Habitat Index, SHI) and indicators of governance (World Governance Indicators, WGI) and population density. The question at the heart of the research was whether various approaches to assessing development could be related to habitat and species protection, but this necessitated the inclusion of the quality of governance, as this has been established as being an important element for both. The analysis was based on data collected from 180 countries over the years 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024, and was analyzed using OLS regression. The results suggest that the relationships between these factors are complex. Indicators of development having an element of perception (happiness and the Social Progress Index) had a statistically significant (p < 0.001) yet negative association with the SHI, but had no apparent association (p > 0.05) with the indicators based on protected areas (TBN, SPI and PAR). While the adjusted R2 was low (<22%), results suggested that population density had a significant and negative association with the SHI indicator. The paper provides recommendations for future research to explore this important nexus between governance, development, population density and habitat and species protection.