**5. Conclusions**

In our study on the identification of priority knowledge gaps to better protect biodiversity and simultaneously secure local livelihoods, we focused on the loss of dry forests by subsistence agriculture in western Madagascar. However, we are aware that large international agribusinesses and the mining industry, as well as oil extraction practices, may locally present a bigger threat to this biome than slash-and-burn farming [39], particularly seeing how these industries has wiped forests from other countries like for example Ghana [141]. It is of grea<sup>t</sup> concern that Madagascar's president Andry Rajoelina's recently announced cabinet mainly consists of technicians and business leaders [98] and that he declared to follow Ghana in its recent advances in economic development [142]. Conservationists are highly concerned about his priority of short-term economic gains over long-term security of natural resources and ecosystem services [99,143,144]. Scientists including ourselves therefore call on the new president to keep to his promise aiming to curb corruption and to make Madagascar a model for conservation, while simultaneously urging the international community to continue its financial support of protecting biodiversity in Madagascar [40,143,145–147].

Not surprisingly given the interlinkages of the goals and targets of the SDGs, ABTs and 2 ◦C target of the Paris Climate Agreement [10,12,78], the results of our study demonstrate that even though we started with a focus on SDGs 2, 10 and 15, the priority knowledge gaps identified concern a wide range of other SDGs and address issues necessary to be solved to better reach several ABTs as well as the 2 ◦C target.

Many characteristics of the problems and challenges found in Madagascar are comparable to those in other biodiversity-rich but economically disadvantaged countries [33]. We hope that our idea of focusing the search for key knowledge gaps on a regional scale (i.e., the dry forests of western Madagascar) and using expert involvement via questionnaires can be used as a blue-print, inspiring and aligning most urgen<sup>t</sup> research projects, streamlining research funds and resources to local needs.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/20/5695/s1: Questionnaire S1, Table S2: Background information of participating experts, Table S3: Complete ranking of all knowledge gaps, Table S4: Knowledge gaps rankings compared between (a) female and male participants, (b) Malagasy participants and those of other nationality, and (c) di fferent age groups, Table S5: Full list of participants' suggested additional knowledge gaps, Figure S1. Di fferences in mean ranking scores by (a) female and male participants, (b) participants of Malagasy origin and those of other nationalities, and (c) participants of young (<25, 25–35), medium (35–45) and older (45–65, >65) age.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization: A.S.K.F. and L.S., data curation: A.S.K.F.; Formal analysis: A.S.K.F.; funding acquisition: L.S.; investigation: L.S., A.S.K.F.; methodology: A.S.K.F. and L.S.; project administration: L.S.; resources: L.S.; supervision: L.S.; writing—original draft preparation: A.S.K.F., L.S.; writing—review and editing: A.S.K.F. and L.S.

**Funding:** This research was conducted within the project "Towards a future sustainable world where climate, biodiversity and human well-being are safeguarded" (sustainCBW)", funded by the Leibniz Association (grant number SAS-2017-PIK-LFV) and the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig.

**Acknowledgments:** We thank the sustainCBW project partners Kirsten Thonicke and Diana Sietz (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research), Katrin Vohland and Jens Jetzkowitz (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin), Ana Paula Aguiar and Odirilwe Selomane (Stockholm Resilience Centre), Carolin Sperk (Think Tank for Sustainability, Berlin) for valuable comments in the initial phase of this project and Wolfgang Wägele (Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig, Bonn) for logistic support. Particular thanks go to Peter Kappeler, Christian Roos and Matthias Markolf (German Primate Center, Göttingen) who helped pilot trialing the questionnaire. Matthias Markolf also helped us spreading the questionnaires through his networks. We would also like to thank all the participating experts in this study for their time and e ffort to fill in our questionnaire, and our three anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions significantly improved an earlier version of this manuscript.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
