Bigger is better: Improved nature conservation and economic returns from landscape-level mitigation

Impact mitigation is a primary mechanism on which countries rely to reduce environmental externalities and balance development with conservation. Mitigation policies are transitioning from traditional project-by-project planning to landscape-level planning. Although this larger-scale approach is exp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science advances 2016-07, Vol.2 (7), p.e1501021
Main Authors: Kennedy, Christina M, Miteva, Daniela A, Baumgarten, Leandro, Hawthorne, Peter L, Sochi, Kei, Polasky, Stephen, Oakleaf, James R, Uhlhorn, Elizabeth M, Kiesecker, Joseph
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Brazil
Carbon - chemistry
Carbon - metabolism
Conservation of Energy Resources - economics
Ecosystem
Forests
Models, Economic
Saccharum - growth & development
SciAdv r-articles
Water Quality
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Summary:Impact mitigation is a primary mechanism on which countries rely to reduce environmental externalities and balance development with conservation. Mitigation policies are transitioning from traditional project-by-project planning to landscape-level planning. Although this larger-scale approach is expected to provide greater conservation benefits at the lowest cost, empirical justification is still scarce. Using commercial sugarcane expansion in the Brazilian Cerrado as a case study, we apply economic and biophysical steady-state models to quantify the benefits of the Brazilian Forest Code (FC) under landscape- and property-level planning. We find that FC compliance imposes small costs to business but can generate significant long-term benefits to nature: supporting 32 (±37) additional species (largely habitat specialists), storing 593,000 to 2,280,000 additional tons of carbon worth $69 million to $265 million ($ pertains to U.S. dollars), and marginally improving surface water quality. Relative to property-level compliance, we find that landscape-level compliance reduces total business costs by $19 million to $35 million per 6-year sugarcane growing cycle while often supporting more species and storing more carbon. Our results demonstrate that landscape-level mitigation provides cost-effective conservation and can be used to promote sustainable development.
ISSN:2375-2548
2375-2548
DOI:10.1126/sciadv.1501021