Future projections of biodiversity and ecosystem services in Europe with two integrated assessment models

Abstract

Projections of future changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) are of increasing importance to inform policy and decision-making on options for conservation and sustainable use of BES. Scenario-based modelling is a powerful tool to assess these future changes. This study assesses the consequences for BES in Europe under four socio-environmental scenarios designed from a BES perspective. We evaluated these scenarios using two integrated assessment models (IMAGE-GLOBIO and CLIMSAVE IAP, respectively). Our results showed that (i) climate and land use change will continue to pose significant threats to biodiversity and some ecosystem services, even in the most optimistic scenario; (ii) none of the four scenarios achieved overall preservation of BES in Europe; and (iii) targeted policies (e.g. on climate change, biodiversity conservation and sustainable land management) and behavioural change (e.g. reducing meat consumption, water-saving behaviour) reduced the magnitude of BES loss. These findings stress the necessity of more ambitious policies and actions if BES in Europe are to be safeguarded. We further found that the multi-modelling approach was critical to account for complementary BES dimensions and highlighted different sources of uncertainties (e.g. related to land use allocation, driving forces behind BES changes, trade assumptions), which facilitated nuanced and contextualised insights with respect to possible BES futures.

Integrated assessment of the food-water-land-ecosystems nexus in Europe: Implications for sustainability

“…This results in changing spatial patterns for agriculture for different scenarios with knock--on effects for forestry (competition for land), water (irrigation needs) and biodiversity (habitat availability) and changes in land use diversity. Veerkamp et al (2020) also demonstrated similar Europe--wide observations even under the most optimistic scenarios. On the other hand, the declines in both land use diversity and biodiversity vulnerability in northern Europe reflect the northward shift of agriculture under extreme climate scenarios, dominating the land use (hence reducing diversity) and increasing habitat space (especially for arable--related species, hence reducing vulnerability).…”

The road to integrate climate change effects on land-use change in regional biodiversity models

“…This would also represent an improvement over integrated assessment models, which are typically applied to evaluate proposed climate mitigation but still lack explicit biodiversity integration despite attempts of using IAMs for assessing biodiversity loss (e.g. Veerkamp et al, 2020). Ultimately, with fully integrated models including bi-directional effects (Fig.…”

A review of macroeconomic models for the WEFE nexus assessment

“…WEFE -Water, Energy, Food and Ecosystems. Focusing on the entire WEFE nexus, Veerkamp et al (2020) stress its importance for the future of biodiversity and ecosystem services projections to inform decision-makers about possible options for their conservation in Europe.…”

“…In addition to that, the possibility of IAMs to project the impact of different climate policies on the economy allows researchers to investigate them also under the nexus perspective. At the same time, we find only two works which focus on the WEFE nexus: Veerkamp et al (2020) and Kebede et al (2021). The former assesses the entire nexus by combining two different IAMs, while the latter analyses the outcomes of an IAM with impact indicators representing key nexus interactions.…”