Larger gains from improved management over sparing–sharing for tropical forests

Runting, Rebecca K.; Ruslandi,; Griscom, Bronson W.; Struebig, Matthew J.; Satar, Musnanda; Meijaard, Erik; Buřivalová, Zuzana; Cheyne, Susan M.; Deere, Nicolas J.; Game, Edward T.; Putz, Francis E.; Wells, Jessie A.; Wilting, Andreas; Ancrenaz, Marc; Ellis, Peter W.; Khan, Faisal Ali Anwarali; Leavitt, Sara M.; Marshall, Andrew J.; Possingham, Hugh P.; Watson, James; Venter, Oscar

doi:10.1038/s41893-018-0203-0

Cited by 62 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…When a landscape that is largely ecologically intact is being 'opened up' for development, strategic, proactive planning is needed to identify opportunities for enhanced outcomes for both environmental and agricultural goals (Forman and Collinge 1997). Systematic planning can help guide complex land-use decisions by fostering stakeholder engagement, improving the efficiency of land use allocation, describing the tradeoffs between biodiversity and economic objectives thereby identifying compromise solutions and, identifying management opportunities and strategies that can improve biodiversity outcomes in production landscapes (Polasky et al 2008, Runting et al 2015, Adams et al 2016, Estes et al 2016, Runting et al 2019, Strassburg et al 2019. However, to date, these efforts typically have been conducted in transformed (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Minimising the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services in an intact landscape under risk of rapid agricultural development

Williams

Grantham

Watson

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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As humanity's demand for resources continues to rise and productive arable lands become increasingly scarce, many of Earth's remaining intact regions are at heightened risk of destruction from agricultural development. In situations where agricultural expansion is inevitable, it is important to manage intact landscape transformation so that impacts on environmental values are minimised. Here, we present a novel, spatially explicit, land use planning framework that addresses the decision making needed to account for different, competing economic-environment objectives (agricultural production value, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem service retention) when land use change is inevitable within an intact landscape. We apply our framework to the globally significant savannahs of the Orinoquia (Colombia), which in a post-conflict era is under increased agricultural development pressure. We show that while negative environmental impacts can be reduced through planning, the total area of land converted to agriculture is the unavoidable principal driver of biodiversity and ecosystem service loss. We therefore identify planning solutions that perform well across all objectives simultaneously, despite trade-offs among them. When 15%, 20%, 30% and 40% of the study area is allowed to be converted to agriculture, on average planning can improve species persistence and ecosystem service retention by up to 16%, 15%, 12%, and 9%, respectively, when compared to agricultural-focused solutions. Development in the region so far has had an unnecessarily large impact on environmental objectives due to a lack of effective land use planning, creating an 'opportunity debt'. Our study provides an evidence base to inform proactive planning and the development of environmentally sensible agricultural development policy and practice in the region. This framework can be used by stakeholders to achieve agriculture expansion goals and maximise economic profit while minimising impacts on the environment in the Orinoquia, or any relatively intact region that is being developed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Minimising the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services in an intact landscape under risk of rapid agricultural development

Williams

Grantham

Watson

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…In conclusion, whilst the optimal composition of land under alternative management differed between regions, we find some general commonalities. By exploring the full range of scenario space, our study adds to a growing body of research which suggests that mixed strategies, in which high-yield production enables an increase in the area of both 'spared' natural habitat and, elsewhere within same the region, 'shared' low-yield farmland, can outperform both land sharing and two-compartment sparing (Geschke, James, Bennett, & Nimmo, 2018;Law et al, 2017;Runting et al, 2019).…”

Section: In Both Regions Species On Thementioning

confidence: 99%

Optimising nature conservation outcomes for a given region‐wide level of food production

Finch

Green

Massimino

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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The land sharing‐sparing framework aims to quantify the trade‐off between food production and biodiversity conservation, but it has been criticized for offering, for reasons of simplicity, an unrealistically limited set of different land uses. Here, we develop the framework to evaluate a much larger suite of land‐use strategies in which the areas and yields of three land‐use compartments - natural habitat, high‐yield farmland, and lower‐yield farmland - are varied simultaneously. For two regions of England, we use functions that relate the local population density of breeding bird species to farm yield to simulate species‐specific region‐wide population sizes under each strategy. We find that geometric mean population size, averaged across all species, is maximized when farmland yields are higher than the current average yield, and when spared land combines both natural habitat and low‐yield farmland. This conclusion is relatively insensitive to the maximum yield considered feasible under extreme land sparing, and holds across a range of region‐wide food production targets. To some extent, our conclusion depends on which species groups were included in the assessment. Considered alone, farmland birds preferred a strategy with little or no natural habitat. Nonetheless, the optimal strategy was broadly consistent across all widely recognized listings of species of conservation concern. Synthesis and applications. Our study looks at landscapes with a long history of agricultural use, and which have little remaining natural habitat, such as those found in lowland England. In these landscapes, conservation outcomes are likely to be maximized by mixed strategies in which high‐yield production enables an increase in area of both natural habitat and low‐yield farmland elsewhere in the region.

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“…Within terrestrial protected areas, for example, Adams et al 16 found that the relative priority of expansion and management is determined by observable factors: the relative costs of the two actions and rates of degradation in protected and unprotected areas. Further, Runting et al 45 found greater biodiversity outcomes from improved management compared to shifting to a landscape-sparing strategy. Similar results were found by Kuempel et al 44 in the marine context where optimal budget allocations were split across enforcement or expansion, but the long-term allocations favored enforcement, and by McGowan et al, 46 who found that small management budgets favor marine protected area establishment, whereas larger budgets favor fisheries management strategies.…”

Section: Guidelines For Achieving Aichi Target 11 Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence-Based Guidelines for Prioritizing Investments to Meet International Conservation Objectives

et al. 2020

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Larger gains from improved management over sparing–sharing for tropical forests

Abstract: The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.

Cited by 62 publications

References 48 publications

Minimising the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services in an intact landscape under risk of rapid agricultural development

Minimising the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services in an intact landscape under risk of rapid agricultural development

Optimising nature conservation outcomes for a given region‐wide level of food production

Evidence-Based Guidelines for Prioritizing Investments to Meet International Conservation Objectives

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