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International commitments for ecosystem restoration add up to one-quarter of the world’s arable land. While fulfilling them would ease global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity decline, it could also displace food production and impose financial costs on farmers. This article presents a restoration prioritization approach that can reveal these synergies and trade-offs, incorporate ecological and economic efficiencies of scale and model specific policy options.
A restoration prioritization approach can deliver an eightfold increase in cost-effectiveness for biodiversity conservation. Photo: webguzs / Getty Images.
Using an actual large-scale restoration target of the Atlantic Forest hotspot, the authors show that the approach can deliver an eightfold increase in cost-effectiveness for biodiversity conservation compared with a baseline of non-systematic restoration. A compromise solution avoids 26% of the biome’s current extinction debt of 2,864 plant and animal species (an increase of 257% compared with the baseline). Moreover, this solution sequesters 1 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent (a 105% increase) while reducing costs by US$28 billion (a 57% decrease).
Seizing similar opportunities elsewhere would offer substantial contributions to some of the greatest challenges for humankind.
Past event / One million species are threatened with extinction. A keynote by SEI Executive Director Måns Nilsson will be held on 4 June at the EU Commission in Sweden.
Media coverage / SEI study uses citizen engagement to record and locate Yorkshire's Mountain Hare population.
Feature / Trase data brings unprecedented transparency to the supply chains and impacts of Brazilian cattle and beef production.
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