How to balance biodiversity goals with limited economic resources

Date:
April 14, 2022
Source:
Arizona State University
Summary:
In 2019, a landmark report gave the world its first report card on
biodiversity loss. There was one crystal clear conclusion: human
actions threaten more species with global extinction than ever
before. Now, a research team has reviewed combining conservation
with practical economic tools using a case study of Colombia, South
America, a high priority but underfunded country for biodiversity
conservation.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
In 2019, a landmark report gave the world its first report card on
biodiversity loss. There was one crystal clear conclusion: human actions threaten more species with global extinction than ever before.


========================================================================== According to the IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) report, currently 25 percent, or 1
million species, are threatened with extinction. The drivers of change
have only accelerated in the past 50 years. The human population has
doubled to 8 billion, contributing to climate change, land and sea-use
change, overexploitation of resources and pollution. Two-thirds of the
oceans are impacted. 85 percent of wetlands have been lost.

As a result of these stark data findings, the IPBES agreement fingered
human land-use changes as the primary culprit.

Now, an ASU research team has developed the first-of-its-kind study that combines conservation with practical economic tools for a case study
of Colombia, South America, a high priority but underfunded country for biodiversity conservation.

"We focused on the case study of the country of Colombia to demonstrate an approach to maximize the biodiversity benefits from limited conservation funding while ensuring that landowners maintain economic returns
equivalent to agriculture," said Leah Gerber, who was lead author of the
IPBES report, and is a professor of conservation science in the School
of Life Sciences and founding director of the Center for Biodiversity
Outcomes (CBO) at Arizona State University.

While they found that Colombia would need to substantially increase its conservation spending, the study developed a prioritization map that
permits policymakers to target conservation actions toward regions where conservation benefits are the highest and economic impacts are low --
giving the biggest ecological bang for the buck.



==========================================================================
To do so, Gerber teamed up with Colombia native Camila Guerrero-Pineda,
who, just three years ago, left her home country to join ASU and
be mentored as a graduate student by Gerber and Gwenllian D. Iacona,
assistant research professor at the School of Life Sciences, to ultimately
make a difference back home.

"It's fair to categorize that Colombia is a megadiverse country" said
Guerrero- Pineda. "It arguably has some of the greatest biodiversity
in the world, given its size, and a lot of scientists and academics
in Colombia fear the ecological consequences of human actions." Now,
she is the first author and a first-year ASU School of Life Sciences
and Conservation Innovation Lab graduate student who contributed their
results in the journal Nature Sustainability.

Cattle, coca and biodiversity Colombia ranks among one of just 17
megadiverse countries in the world.



========================================================================== Colombia possesses a unique geography and natural beauty as the only
South American country with combined coastlines of the Pacific Ocean
and Caribbean Seas, along with the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which
at 13,000m, is the world's highest coastal mountain range.

Human actions now threaten the only freshwater species of its kind, the
pink river dolphin. The cotton-top tamarin. The Orinoco crocodile. The 100-pound, giant capybara rodent. The spectacled bear. Plants (flor de
mayo orchid), amphibians (golden poison frog) and butterflies (Colombian eighty-eight) too.

All unique species to Colombia. And all could vanish.

In the South American continent, Colombia stands out as a region that has retained its biodiversity, one of the few silver linings due to a long
history of violent, human conflicts. Prior to a 2016 peace agreement,
Colombia had government instability and a decades long guerrilla war
led by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and other
minor groups.

"FARC had a lot of control over the forests, and it prevented a lot of
economic development" said Guerrero-Pineda. Since the FARC controlled
the forest for coca leaf (the plant used to produce cocaine) production
and the drug trade to finance five decades of asymmetrical warfare,
one effect was to prevent unbridled development -- and inadvertently
preserve biodiversity.

In the ASU-led study, they found that the probability of transformation
to cattle and other crops decreases with distance to roads, while the probability of transformation to coca increases. These results suggest
that coca crops are grown in more isolated areas, away from roads,
compared with cattle.

The presence of FARC was the most influential variable determining the
fate of the deforested area, as the odds of forest conversion to coca
crops over conversion to cattle or other crops in areas with presence
of FARC is 308.04% higher than the odds in areas without FARC.

"It also prevented a lot of scientific monitoring because scientists
were afraid of going into the forests," said Guerrero-Pineda.

But Colombia now stands at a biodiversity crossroads. The 2016 peace
agreement has now brought unprecedented development. During the past 5
years alone, GDP growth has been 5-6% every year.

During that time, the deforestation rate rose by 44% after the peace
agreement.

Palm oil production, logging, mining, and gas oil extraction are some
of the leading culprits besides agriculture development.

Do nothing, and Gerber's team estimates the current biodiversity loss
rate could increase by 50% by 2033.

Paradise lost or opportunity cost? But how does Colombia preserve its biodiversity while balancing the need for economic development? Gerber's
team thinks they found a new blueprint to not only aid Colombia, but also extend to other policymakers in other countries to help make a difference.

For the first time, they applied a unique quantitative model that relates conservation investment to national biodiversity outcomes.

"The methods developed here offer an approach to identifying areas
of greatest conservation returns on investment by balancing cost of conservation action, measured as opportunity cost for agriculture,
and biodiversity impacts," said study lead author Camila Guerrero-Pineda.

When it comes to development, everything economically comes down to
opportunity costs.

An extreme example of the choices nations must make is often referred to
as the "Guns versus butter" model of economics. It refers to whether
a country is more interested in spending money on war or feeding
their people -- but it can't do both, and there are always going to
be tradeoffs.

In Colombia's case, it's economic development versus biodiversity
outcomes. Or more colloquially, parks versus parking lots. Preservation
versus development.

Their team modeled the opportunity cost of conservation (OCC) to
agriculture as an approximation of the expected cost of compensating a landowner for avoiding conversion of their property.

"Opportunity cost is what you're missing out on or what you're not doing because of a decision to do something else," said Guerrero-Pineda. "What
that means is that someone is not going to be able to use the land that
is going to be used for conservation." They assumed in the modeling of
a protection cost that deforestation can be counteracted by compensating
the land owner, either by purchase, such as the setting the sale value
of a parcel equal to its expected future cash flow, or as continued
payments for ecosystem services.

To avoid this additional biodiversity loss, Gerber's groups estimated that Colombia would have to invest $37-39 million USD annually in the best and worst-case scenarios of deforestation. According to them, this means an increase in its conservation spending of 7.69-10.16 million USD per year.

Avoiding this decline (preventing further loss) would require $61-63
million USD annually, which is more than twice the conservation spending
before the peace agreement.

"Our strategy for targeting conservation funding involves first
identifying regions with a high risk of forest conversion to agriculture
[such as cattle ranching or other crops]," said Gerber.

"More broadly, the research agenda is around incorporating cost into
decision- making to achieve the most outcomes, given limited resources."
They found that the Andean region contains the highest mean OCC,
reflecting a very strong probability of agricultural conversion of the remaining forests.

Following closely behind were the Pacific, the Caribbean and the
Orinoqui'a regions. The Amazon region, the one with the lowest mean
probability of agricultural conversion, had the greatest forest cover percentage and the greatest forest area, had a much lower OCC.

"One of the things we're excited about with this work is that it's a demonstration of the potential of this idea of using return on investment
for thinking about allocated conservation resources," said co-author
Gwenllian D.

Iacona. "And so, we took these two high profile approaches that are out
there, called the Waldron Model and the Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) metric, and we put them together so country-level
decision makers can make the best-informed decisions at that type
of scale." Their results can also assist in the planning of land
preservation and national parks. In Colombia, the National Natural Park
System is working to declare five new protected areas, and to expand
three more. This builds on evidence showing that more effective and
lasting conservation outcomes are achieved when governance empowers
local communities and support their environmental stewardship, including indigenous communities, reserves and Afro-Colombian lands.

More to come "I think Camila's work really sets us up to assist entities, whether they be countries or companies, in quantitatively measuring the
impact of conservation interventions on different metrics, whether they
need biodiversity or climate mitigation, or other types of conservation strategies," said Gerber. "I'm optimistic that we'll be able to build and
scale this to improve conservation outcomes more generally." "Camila,
for example, in the summer, will be working on a collaborative USAID
project with Conservation International in Peru and we're going to be
applying a similar approach to identify green economic growth pathways."
Their approach is another prime example of ASU's commitment to advance
research to finding practical solutions of social, economic and today's
urgent environmental challenges.

"So, in that sense, Camila's foundational work is not only novel, but
also represents a practical foundation for broad applications globally,"
said Gerber. "We're exploring applications in several other countries
and for additional sustainable development goals. By coupling this work
with market- based incentives, this work offers to rapidly accelerate
our ability to achieve sustainable development goals."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Arizona_State_University. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Camila Guerrero-Pineda, Gwenllian D. Iacona, Louise Mair, Frank
Hawkins,
Juha Siikama"ki, Daniel Miller, Leah R. Gerber. An
investment strategy to address biodiversity loss from
agricultural expansion. Nature Sustainability, 2022; DOI:
10.1038/s41893-022-00871-2 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220414125111.htm

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