Putting pricing incentives for reforestation and enlarging protection areas will not stop biodiversity decline and the ongoing loss of critical ecosystem functions unless they are accompanied by measures that also target managed landscapes, according to a new study published in a journal by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
The article published in Nature Communications on Tuesday demonstrates that even in scenarios with a high demand for land, it is possible to maintain biodiversity-friendly landscapes, which also provide critical services such as pollination and improving soil health.
The research pointed out that land use should not be regarded as a zero-sum game and that it matters where farmland is located in order to promote landscape diversity.
Therefore, with the right incentives, farmed landscapes could be managed in a way that enhances the numerous benefits nature offers to society and also supports the biodiversity conservation targets of protected areas.
“The fact that the international community has agreed to put 30% of the land surface under protection by 2030 is a big step forward, but we should also not forget the other 70%. Ultimately, these are the areas, in which our economy and nature interact the most and which are home to many species that are most familiar to us,” commented PIK lead author Patrick von Jeetze.
“From pollination and soil protection to mental health aspects and flood prevention, we know that green spaces in intensely-used landscapes and close to human settlements can provide many benefits. A well-organised network of green spaces also helps to better link-up protected areas, which would make it easier for species to migrate – a critical aspect especially in a changing climate,” he added.
The study highlighted the important co-benefits between conservation measures, with the researchers demonstrating that a land-based climate mitigation scenario, for example, also caused a 75% reduction of soil loss at the global scale as compared to a reference scenario without climate action.
What is needed, therefore, is a smart and adaptive allocation of land use at the global scale to promote biodiversity-friendly landscapes and to balance different land conservation targets, the study said.
“There is broad consensus that 10-20% of permanent habitats, such as extensively managed grasslands or groves, should be maintained in areas of intense land use in order to provide an ecological reserve and to connect protected areas,” co-author Isabelle Weindl of PIK added.
“Our study shows that maintaining these habitats in farmed landscapes would in principle be possible at the global scale, even in scenarios with a strong competition between different land uses.”
In a collaborative effort among scientists from PIK, the University of Minnesota, the University of Basel, and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the researchers employed a new modelling approach by combining the open-source land-system model MAgPIE (Model of Agricultural Production and its Impact on the Environment) with the Spatial Economic Allocation Landscape Simulator (SEALS) and the Global Soil Erosion Modelling (GloSEM) platform.
As part of this study, they could then downscale land-use projections across four alternative future scenarios to the field scale – across an area of 300 metres by 300 metres – in order to estimate how land cover changes at this relatively high-resolution could drive changes in pollination, landscape heterogeneity, and soil loss by water erosion.
Co-author Alexander Popp, leader of the research group on land-use management at PIK, described biodiversity-friendly landscapes as essential for a sustainable, cost-effective, and nature-based agricultural production but warned that policies to protect should not be pursued in isolation.
“Our study shows that the creation of biodiversity-friendly landscapes is generally possible and does not lead to trade-offs with other conservation targets such as land-based climate mitigation. It now takes policies that combine environmental goals with better framework conditions that support farmers in generating wider benefits for society,” he said.
“This is not only critical for reaching the global climate and biodiversity protection targets but also for getting farmers and other stakeholders on board,” Popp added.
By Roy Manuell – roy@carbon-pulse.com
