Fig. 1. Critical natural assets, defined as the natural and semi-natural terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems required to maintain 12 of nature’s ‘local’ contributions to people (local NCP) on land (green) and in the ocean (blue).

a, The 12 local NCP analysed (that is, not including global NCP, shown in Supplementary Fig. 4). b, The NCP accumulation curve, reflecting the total area required to maintain target levels of all NCP in every country, with dotted lines denoting the area of critical natural assets (90% of NCP in 30% of land area and 24% of EEZ area). Areas selected by optimization within each country are aggregated across all countries to create a single global accumulation curve; for area requirements in individual countries, see Supplementary Data 1. c, Map of critical natural assets, with darker shades connoting critical natural assets that are associated with higher levels of aggregated NCP. Grey areas show the extent of remaining natural assets not designated ‘critical’ but included in this analysis; white areas (cropland, urban and bare areas, ice and snow, and ocean areas outside the EEZ) were excluded from the optimization.