An investment strategy to address biodiversity loss from agricultural expansion

Guerrero-Pineda, Camila; Iacona, Gwenllian D.; Mair, Louise; Hawkins, Frank; Siikamäki, Juha; Miller, Daniel C.; Gerber, Leah R.

doi:10.1038/s41893-022-00871-2

Cited by 23 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Unlike healthcare, where the metric QALYs (quality‐adjusted life years) is used to compare the benefits of various actions in cost‐utility and cost‐effectiveness analyses (Adam & Murray, 2003), there is no universally accepted metric for measuring and comparing the effectiveness of conservation interventions. While having such a metric would greatly improve the comparability of different projects and actions, the heterogeneity in conservation outcomes and the different values placed upon each make designing and implementing such a metric challenging (although see the STAR metric and COPYs for attempts to do this; Cullen et al, 1999; Mair et al, 2021; Guerrero‐Pineda et al, 2022). It is vital to define the metric of environmental effectiveness used as different outcomes are used in different studies including abundance, survival, species richness, ecosystem intactness, area of land (see Noss, 1990).…”

Section: Applications Of the Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determining the economic costs and benefits of conservation actions: A decision support framework

White

Petrovan

Booth

et al. 2022

Conservat Sci and Prac

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The need for conservation action to be cost-effective is widely accepted, resulting in increased interest and effort to assess effectiveness. Assessing the financial and economic costs of conservation is equally important for assessing cost-effectiveness, yet their measurement and assessment are repeatedly identified as lacking. The healthcare sector, in contrast, has made substantial progress in identifying and including costs in decision-making. Here, we consider what conservation can learn from this experience. We present a three-step framework for identifying and recording the relevant economic costs and benefits of conservation interventions where the user (1) describes the costing context, (2) determines which types of cost and benefit to include, and (3) obtains values for these costs and benefits alongside metadata necessary for others to interpret the data. This framework is designed to help estimate economic costs but can also be used flexibly to record the direct costs of interventions (i.e., financial costs) and calculate financial and economic benefits. Although recording data on economic costs and benefits is deceptively complex, this framework facilitates improved recording, and indicates how collating this data could enhance the assessment of cost-effectiveness across conservation contexts using a range of decision-making tools.

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Section: Applications Of the Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determining the economic costs and benefits of conservation actions: A decision support framework

White

Petrovan

Booth

et al. 2022

Conservat Sci and Prac

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Thus, conservation and research investment in these highly prioritized rank PGRFA could increase the income of rural families and provide a direct opportunity for connecting the demobilization of combatants in rural productive projects [71]. Moreover, by focusing the investment on the PGRFA's high highest rank for economic benefits in the areas with the most significant conservation return, it could also facilitate the prevention of forest conversion by agricultural activities that currently are accelerating biodiversity loss within Colombia [72].…”

Section: The Economic Benefits and Food Security Importancementioning

confidence: 99%

Prioritizing Colombian plant genetic resources for investment in research using indicators about the geographic origin, vulnerability status, economic benefits, and food security importance

Cerón-Souza,

Delgadillo-Duran,

Polo-Murcia

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Germplasm banks are the most significant repository for plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA) worldwide. Despite their strategic importance, national germplasm banks of tropical megadiverse developing countries such as Colombia have extremely limited funds. Therefore, making strategic decisions about research investment is essential. Here, we designed a data-driven approach to build an index that sorts Colombian PGRFA into three groups: high, medium, or low priority, based on four pillars of information from open-access databases and aligned with the sustainable goals of no poverty and zero hunger: Geographic origin, vulnerability status, economic benefits, and food security importance. We analyzed 345 PGRFA using the index, separating them into two groups, 275 already conserved in the Colombian germplasm bank (BGVCOL group) and 70 not currently conserved in the BGVCOL (NCB group). We used fuzzy logic to classify each PGRFA by each pillar and integrate it to obtain a priority index. Missing data for native crops were frequent in the BGVCOL group. Therefore we adopted an imputation strategy to fill the gaps and calculated the uncertainty. After applying the index, PGRFA with higher priority were 24 (8.72%) from the BGVCOL (i.e., 15 potatoes, three tomatoes, two tree tomatoes, pineapple, cocoa, papaya, and yacon) and one from NCB (i.e., coffee). We concluded that this methodology successfully prioritized PGRFA in Colombia and shows the big holes of knowledge for future research and alternatives to improve this index. The versatility of this methodology could be helpful in other genebanks with budget limitations for research investment.

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“…Their approach models the expected net present value of potential net rents resulting from agricultural uses of a forested parcel, while accounting for the probability of conversion to agriculture (including coca crops) or cattle ranching. Provided that each agricultural use k has its own annual expected return per area of land Rk, and that each parcel i has a probability of conversion Pik from forest to agricultural use k, the expected value for a given discount rate δ is Thus, the OCC of an area composed of several parcels is equal to the sum of the expected returns of the probable agricultural uses, weighted according to their probability of conversion, in each of the parcels, summed across all of the parcels 35 . We used a discount rate of 10% (Guerrero-Pineda et al 2022).…”

Section: Relative Cost Of the Three Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As such, even if a reactive strategy is more effective in increasing retention of valued biota, it is not necessarily more cost-effective. Studies at different scales have demonstrated that the spatial distribution of costs can be just as important as that of biodiversity in determining optimal conservation investments 33,[35][36][37][38][39] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Including loss minimisation in conservation representation: expansion of the protected area network in Colombia to maximise habitat retention

Negret

Venegas

Sonter

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Most protected area (PA) planning aims to improve biota representation within the PA system, but this does not necessarily achieve the best outcomes for biota retention across regions when we also consider areas outside the PA system. Here we assess the implications that different PA expansion strategies can have on the retention of species habitat across an entire region. Using retention of forest habitat for Colombia’s 550 forest-dependent bird species as our outcome variable, we found that when a minimum of 30% of each species’ habitat was included in the PA system, a pattern of PA expansion targeting areas at highest deforestation risk (risk-prevention) led to the retention, on average, of 7.2% more forest habitat per species by 2050 than did a pattern that targeted areas at lowest risk (risk-avoidance). The risk-prevention approach cost more per km² of land conserved, but it was more cost-effective in retaining habitat (50 – 69% lower cost per km2 of avoided deforestation). To have the same effectiveness preventing habitat loss in Colombia, the risk-avoidance approach required 234% more area and 306% higher cost. PA expansion should focus on the contributions of PAs to outcomes not only within PA systems themselves, but across regions and jurisdictions.

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An investment strategy to address biodiversity loss from agricultural expansion

Cited by 23 publications

References 30 publications

Determining the economic costs and benefits of conservation actions: A decision support framework

Determining the economic costs and benefits of conservation actions: A decision support framework

Prioritizing Colombian plant genetic resources for investment in research using indicators about the geographic origin, vulnerability status, economic benefits, and food security importance

Including loss minimisation in conservation representation: expansion of the protected area network in Colombia to maximise habitat retention

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