TY - JOUR
T1 - Balancing food production with climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation in the Brazilian Amazon
AU - Silva, Ramon Felipe Bicudo da
AU - Millington, James D.A.
AU - Viña, Andrés
AU - Dou, Yue
AU - Moran, Emilio
AU - Batistella, Mateus
AU - Lapola, David M.
AU - Liu, Jianguo
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors wish to thank the National Science Foundation of the United States (grants 1924111 and 1531086 ) and MSU AgBioResearch for their financial support. The authors also thank the “ Programa Rural Sustentável ” and the Instituto Brasileiro de Desenvolvimento Sustentável (grant P-001-MT-276 ). None of these funding sources are to be held responsible for the opinions and views expressed herein. These are the sole responsibility of the authors. We are very grateful to MapBiomas who generated the land-use and land-cover data used in this paper (Project MapBiomas – Collection v.6 of Brazilian Land Cover & Use Map Series, accessed on February 15, 2022 through the link: https://mapbiomas.org/colecoes-mapbiomas?cama_set_language=en ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2023/12/15
Y1 - 2023/12/15
N2 - Climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation are two major environmental actions that need to be effectively performed this century, alongside ensuring food supply for a growing global human population. These three issues are highly interlinked through land management systems. Thus, major global food production regions located in biodiversity hotpots and with potential for carbon sequestration face trade-offs between these valuable land-based ecosystem services. The state of Mato Grosso in Brazil is one such region, where private lands that have been illegally used for agriculture could be restored to natural vegetation – with potential benefits for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, although with potentially negative effects on food production. To address this challenge, in this study we used a multicriteria nexus modeling approach that considers carbon stocks, priority areas for biodiversity conservation, and the opportunity for food production, to develop scenarios of land allocation that aim to balance the benefits and drawbacks of ecosystem restoration. Results show that forcing landowners to restore their individual lands compromises the potential for a “green land market” throughout the Amazon biome in which private landowners with lower food production capacities (e.g., less connected to markets and infrastructure) would benefit from restoration programs that compensate them for the inclusion of environmental restoration among their economic activities, instead of taking large economic risks to produce more food. We additionally highlight that strategic ecosystem restoration can achieve higher gains in biodiversity and carbon with lower costs of restoration actions and with minimal impacts on agriculture. Analyses like ours demonstrate how scenarios of land allocation that simultaneously address climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation through ecosystem restoration, while also minimizing possible impacts on food production, can be sought to move the world towards a sustainable future.
AB - Climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation are two major environmental actions that need to be effectively performed this century, alongside ensuring food supply for a growing global human population. These three issues are highly interlinked through land management systems. Thus, major global food production regions located in biodiversity hotpots and with potential for carbon sequestration face trade-offs between these valuable land-based ecosystem services. The state of Mato Grosso in Brazil is one such region, where private lands that have been illegally used for agriculture could be restored to natural vegetation – with potential benefits for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, although with potentially negative effects on food production. To address this challenge, in this study we used a multicriteria nexus modeling approach that considers carbon stocks, priority areas for biodiversity conservation, and the opportunity for food production, to develop scenarios of land allocation that aim to balance the benefits and drawbacks of ecosystem restoration. Results show that forcing landowners to restore their individual lands compromises the potential for a “green land market” throughout the Amazon biome in which private landowners with lower food production capacities (e.g., less connected to markets and infrastructure) would benefit from restoration programs that compensate them for the inclusion of environmental restoration among their economic activities, instead of taking large economic risks to produce more food. We additionally highlight that strategic ecosystem restoration can achieve higher gains in biodiversity and carbon with lower costs of restoration actions and with minimal impacts on agriculture. Analyses like ours demonstrate how scenarios of land allocation that simultaneously address climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation through ecosystem restoration, while also minimizing possible impacts on food production, can be sought to move the world towards a sustainable future.
KW - ITC-ISI-JOURNAL-ARTICLE
KW - 2023 OA procedure
U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166681
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166681
M3 - Article
C2 - 37673258
AN - SCOPUS:85170238116
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 904
JO - Science of the total environment
JF - Science of the total environment
M1 - 166681
ER -