Recent international agreements have strengthened and expanded commitments to protect and restore native habitats. Nevertheless, biodiversity conservation is hindered because how such commitments should be implemented has been strongly debated. By bringing together researchers on both sides of the habitat fragmentation debate, we identify three incontrovertible principles for area-based biodiversity conservation. Such principles are related to habitat geographic coverage, amount, and connectivity. They emerge from our fundamental agreement that, while large areas of nature are important and must be protected, conservation or restoration of multiple small habitat patches is also critical for global conservation, particularly in regions with high land use. We contend that the many area-based conservation initiatives expected in the coming decades should follow the principles we propose. Considering the importance of biodiversity for maintenance of ecosystem services, we suggest that this would bring unequivocal societal benefits.

Recent agreements have strengthened and expanded ongoing international commitments to protect and restore native habitats. Nevertheless, how such commitments should be implemented has been historically controversial, and nuances in ongoing debates are often misunderstood, hindering biodiversity conservation. We propose three unequivocal principles that must be central to how area-based biodiversity conservation will occur in the coming decades. These principles relate to habitat coverage, amount, and connectivity, and their enunciation clarifies apparent contradictions in the literature. We explain why socio-economic considerations that are central to current biodiversity conservation cannot override these principles. Biodiversity must be supported everywhere on Earth, especially when considering the right of human population to access nature and to benefit from countless ecosystem services.