TY - JOUR
T1 - Strategic approaches to restoring ecosystems can triple conservation gains and halve costs
AU - Strassburg, Bernardo B.N.
AU - Beyer, Hawthorne L.
AU - Crouzeilles, Renato
AU - Iribarrem, Alvaro
AU - Barros, Felipe
AU - de Siqueira, Marinez Ferreira
AU - Sánchez-Tapia, Andrea
AU - Balmford, Andrew
AU - Sansevero, Jerônimo Boelsums Barreto
AU - Brancalion, Pedro Henrique Santin
AU - Broadbent, Eben North
AU - Chazdon, Robin L.
AU - Filho, Ary Oliveira
AU - Gardner, Toby A.
AU - Gordon, Ascelin
AU - Latawiec, Agnieszka
AU - Loyola, Rafael
AU - Metzger, Jean Paul
AU - Mills, Morena
AU - Possingham, Hugh P.
AU - Rodrigues, Ricardo Ribeiro
AU - Scaramuzza, Carlos Alberto de Mattos
AU - Scarano, Fabio Rubio
AU - Tambosi, Leandro
AU - Uriarte, Maria
PY - 2019/1
Y1 - 2019/1
N2 -
International commitments for ecosystem restoration add up to one-quarter of the world’s arable land. Fulfilling them would ease global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity decline but could displace food production and impose financial costs on farmers. Here, we present a restoration prioritization approach capable of revealing these synergies and trade-offs, incorporating ecological and economic efficiencies of scale and modelling specific policy options. Using an actual large-scale restoration target of the Atlantic Forest hotspot, we show that our 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 CO
2
-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.
AB -
International commitments for ecosystem restoration add up to one-quarter of the world’s arable land. Fulfilling them would ease global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity decline but could displace food production and impose financial costs on farmers. Here, we present a restoration prioritization approach capable of revealing these synergies and trade-offs, incorporating ecological and economic efficiencies of scale and modelling specific policy options. Using an actual large-scale restoration target of the Atlantic Forest hotspot, we show that our 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 CO
2
-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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85058884779&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41559-018-0743-8
DO - 10.1038/s41559-018-0743-8
M3 - Article
C2 - 30568285
AN - SCOPUS:85058884779
VL - 3
SP - 62
EP - 70
JO - Nature Ecology & Evolution
JF - Nature Ecology & Evolution
SN - 2397-334X
IS - 1
ER -
