A worldwide assessment of where roads should be built and should not be built

It was with great fascination that I read a new paper on roads that appeared in journal Nature.The researchers William F. Laurance, Gopalasamy Reuben Clements, Sean Sloan, Christine S. O’Connell, Nathan D. Mueller, Miriam Goosem, Oscar Venter, David P. Edwards, Ben Phalan, Andrew Balmford, Rodney Van Der Ree and Irene Burgues Arrea have come up with a 'global roadmap' for prioritising road building across the world. The study will help planners to balance the competing demands of development and environmental protection. It will also help to limit the environmental costs of road building while maximizing its benefits for human race. Read this against the fact that More than 25 million kilometres of new roads will be built worldwide by 2050.

Professor William Laurance of James Cook University in Australia, the study's lead author says "Roads often open a Pandora's Box of environmental problems, but we need roads for our societies and economies, so the challenge is to decide where to put new roads and where to avoid them."

Professor Andrew Balmford from the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology who is a co-author says “"For particular regions the approach can be improved by adding detailed local information but we think our overall framework is a powerful one."

Journal Reference:

William F. Laurance, Gopalasamy Reuben Clements, Sean Sloan, Christine S. O’Connell, Nathan D. Mueller, Miriam Goosem, Oscar Venter, David P. Edwards, Ben Phalan, Andrew Balmford, Rodney Van Der Ree, Irene Burgues Arrea. A global strategy for road building. Nature, 2014, Published online27 August 2014