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 1billion 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.
1.Pontificia Univ Catolica Rio de Janeiro, Rio Conservat & Sustainabil Sci Ctr, Dept Geog & Environm, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2.Int Inst Sustainabil, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil 3.Univ Fed Rio de Janeiro, Programa Posgrad Ecol, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil 4.Univ Queensland, Ctr Excellence Environm Decis, Sch Biol Sci, St Lucia, Qld, Australia 5.Bot Garden Res Inst Rio de Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil 6.Univ Cambridge, Dept Zool, Cambridge, England 7.Univ Fed Rural Rio de Janeiro, Inst Florestas, Dept Environm Sci, Seropedica, Brazil 8.Esalq USP, Dept Ciencias Florestais, Piracicaba, Brazil 9.Univ Florida, Sch Forest Resources & Conservat, Spatial Ecol & Conservat Lab, Gainesville, FL 32611 USA 10.Univ Connecticut, Dept Ecol & Evolutionary Biol, Storrs, CT USA 11.World Resources Inst, Global Restorat Initiat, Washington, DC 20006 USA 12.Univ Fed Minas Gerais, Dept Bot, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil 13.Stockholm Environm Inst, Stockholm, Sweden 14.RMIT Univ, Sch Global Urban & Social Studies, Victoria, Australia 15.Agr Univ Krakow, Fac Prod & Power Engn, Inst Agr Engn & Informat, Krakow, Poland 16.Univ East Anglia, Sch Environm Sci, Norwich, Norfolk, England 17.Univ Fed Goias, Dept Ecol, Lab Biogeog Conservacao, Goiania, Go, Brazil 18.Univ Sao Paulo, Inst Biosci, Dept Ecol, Sao Paulo, Brazil 19.Imperial Coll London, Dept Life Sci, Ascot, Berks, England 20.Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA USA 21.Univ Queensland, St Lucia, Qld, Australia 22.Univ Sao Paulo, Dept Biol Sci, Escola Super Agr Luiz de Queiroz, Piracicaba, Brazil 23.Brazilian Minist Environm MMA, Dept Ecosyst Conservat, Brasilia, DF, Brazil 24.Brazilian Fdn Sustainable Dev, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil 25.Fed Univ ABC, Ctr Engn Modelagem & Ciencias Sociais Aplicadas, Santo Andre, Brazil 26.Columbia Univ, Dept Ecol Evolut & Environm Biol, New York, NY USA
Recommended Citation:
Strassburg, Bernardo B. N.,Beyer, Hawthorne L.,Crouzeilles, Renato,et al. Strategic approaches to restoring ecosystems can triple conservation gains and halve costs[J]. NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION,2019-01-01,3(1):62-70