Working Landscapes Need at Least 20% Native Habitat

Policy Perspective: Working Landscapes Need at Least 20% Native Habitat

Abstract

• International agreements target conserving 17% of Earth's land by 2020, but lack area-based targets within working landscapes (farming, ranching, forestry).
• Review of country-level legislation reveals only 38% of countries have minimum area requirements for conserving native habitats within working landscapes.
• Advocates increasing native habitats to at least 20% of working landscape area where it's below this minimum to improve:
  • Food security
  • Nature’s contributions to people
  • Connectivity and effectiveness of protected areas in underrepresented biomes
• Maintaining native habitat at higher levels where it exceeds the 20% minimum is also important; more than 50% native habitat restoration is needed in particular landscapes.
• The post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework presents an opportunity to include a minimum habitat restoration target for working landscapes that:
  • Contributes to, but does not compete with, initiatives for expanding protected areas.
  • Supports the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Keywords

Agroecology, food security, landscape conservation, native habitat, nature’s contributions, restoration, working landscapes

Introduction

• Governments worldwide aimed to conserve 17% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface within protected areas by 2020 (Convention on Biological Diversity, Aichi Target 11).
• While the Aichi Target 11 is likely to be met and potentially increased in the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, no numerical area-based target exists to conserve biodiversity outside of protected areas which includes “working landscapes” used for farming, ranching, and/or forestry.
• As these landscapes expand and intensify, protecting and restoring native species diversity within them is urgent (Convention on Biological Diversity, Aichi Target 7).
• Native habitats within working landscapes (NWL) play a positive role in the quality of life.
• NWL contribute to regulating benefits such as:
  • Soil protection and Regeneration
  • Water and air purification
  • Pollination
  • Pest control
  • Dampening ocean acidification and climate change mitigation
  • Ameliorating the impacts of natural hazards such as hurricanes, landslides, and floods (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES))
• NWL contribute to the provision of:
  • Food
  • Feed
  • Energy
  • Medicines
  • Genetic resources
• NWL contribute to the non-material aspects of a good quality of life, such as:
  • Learning
  • Inspiration
  • Physical and psychological experiences
  • Supporting identities
• NWL are the core of multifunctional landscape management strategies aimed at promoting farm productivity, biodiversity conservation, and nature’s contributions to people, uniting three science and policy paradigms:
  • Best Management Practices
  • Nature Conservation
  • Green Infrastructure

Incomplete Legislation Worldwide

• Targets for NWL vary enormously among nations.
• Of the 82 countries reviewed, representing 73% of global working landscape area, only 38% set any minimum area requirement for NWL.
• Countries that included targets in their national laws vary widely in the percent of NWL required, and regional representation, with the majority requiring just 5% NWL and being located in Europe.
• Countries also vary in the type of habitats that are afforded legal protection: in many countries, only forest habitats are under legislation, whereas other highly threatened habitat types, such as native grasslands, are ignored.
• Variation reflects country-specific differences in political, social, economic, and cultural conditions, and the lack of clear scientific guidelines on minimum native habitat required for good quality of life.
• In 2020 and 2021, there are critical policy opportunities for setting global restoration targets for NWL. These include:
  • The post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which will be discussed at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, China.
  • Current and future decisions in Europe on the minimum share of agricultural areas to be devoted to “landscape and habitat features” (which can be equivalent to NWL, depending on how they are defined) after 2020.
  • Restoration targets for NWL are also essential to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and commitments for the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030).
• Based on an empirical review of the scientific evidence and modeling, a worldwide restoration and retention target of at least 20% native habitat area within working landscapes that have >80% area already converted is recommended.
• These heavily transformed working landscapes rarely meet the requirements to be considered protected areas and failing to deliver on the dimensions for good quality of life.
• NWL may include grazing (e.g., traditional livestock grazing enhancing grassland diversity), mowing (e.g., hay meadows), harvesting (e.g., native fruits, regulated hunting), or burning (e.g., prescribed burning in scrublands for native species regeneration), as long as these activities sustain or restore native species diversity.
• Starting with the conservation of any remnant native habitats within working landscapes through zero net-loss policies, these remnants should be expanded through restoration to cover at least 20% of landscape area.
• In highly cultivated regions where native habitats now occupy much less than 20% of land area, NWL initiatives will require creative and experimental restoration actions.
• Restoration efforts can be implemented in ways that minimize trade-offs with farm productivity while enhancing nature’s contributions to people.

Prioritizing Native Species

• The diversity and composition of NWL modulate their contributions to people.
• While some benefits from sustaining biodiversity can be achieved with nonnative species, an emphasis on native habitats is essential to reduce species extirpations and extinctions.
• Native species, and their habitats, have potential for new discoveries and unanticipated uses of biodiversity (e.g., new medicines or materials), can mitigate the spread of invasive species, increase the range of nature’s contributions to people, including the basis for religious, spiritual and other cultural experiences.
• A >20% NWL target is intended to complement, not compete with, efforts to establish protected areas, as they have different objectives:
  • Initiatives such as the “Half-Earth Project,” “Nature Needs Half,” and “30% by 2030” largely focus on biodiversity conservation within systems of protected areas, and are central for species intolerant of human activities, including species with large home-ranges and those implicated in human–wildlife conflicts.
  • These initiatives are critically important for global biodiversity conservation.
  • A minimum NWL restoration target is essential to promote nature’s contributions to people within the working landscapes where so many people live and work, as many of these contributions need to be provided locally.
  • Such restoration can also enhance the effectiveness of protected areas by offering corridors and stepping stones interconnecting wild populations across landscapes that might otherwise form barriers or sinks.
  • NWL can therefore improve gene flow and persistence of many native species populations otherwise restricted to protected areas, while enhancing species’ ability to respond to climate change.
  • As most conservation initiatives to date have focused on areas outside working landscapes, NWL offer untapped potential to protect underrepresented and highly threatened environments worldwide, such as grasslands.
  • NWL can be retained or restored while minimizing trade-offs with working landscape productivity, it is possible for NWL conservation to succeed without driving agricultural expansion and reductions in protected areas.
  • In some cases, NWL might qualify as “other effective area-based conservation measures” and could benefit from existing policies.

Fewer Trade-Offs, More Synergies

• Trade-offs must always be assessed and negotiated when allocating areas to NWL, but with proper management we can minimize or eliminate these trade-offs, or even enhance overall agricultural production through synergies across nature’s contributions to people.
• This is possible in part because NWL can increase agricultural productivity in adjacent lands by:
  • Reducing erosion and improving soil biological activity and nutrient availability.
  • Enhancing pollination services for pollinator-dependent crops, which are increasing in demand globally.
  • Slowing the rapid evolution of pests and weeds.
  • Preventing floods and regulating climate.
• In areas with lower potential crop productivity and/or profitability (but sometimes high value for provisioning of nature’s contribution to people, e.g., wetlands), opportunities for protecting or restoring NWL are greater, and can even increase overall agronomic or economic efficiency.
• Especially in those landscapes where >20% NWL does not increase overall production, short-term production should not be the only motivation for managing working landscapes; more emphasis should be placed on long-term food security.
• A large percentage of global cultivated area now produces nonfood crops, from cotton to sugarcane, soybeans, oil palm, and maize used for biofuel or animal feed.
• Current food production largely meets global caloric needs, it fails to provide the diversity required in a healthy diet, notably fruits, nuts, and vegetables.
• Rather than expanding the extent of intensive agricultural areas and eliminating NWL, a shift to more diverse and multifunctional landscapes sustaining native habitats alongside vegetable, fruit, and nut production could produce more nutritious food per unit-area.
• In this way, >20% NWL area can contribute nature’s benefits to people both locally and globally.
• Even where net benefits from restoring NWL exist, land managers do not necessarily recognize them in the short term (a communication and information issue), and benefits as well as costs go beyond the individual farm to affect the whole of society.
• Governmental roles such as relevant policies and legislation are needed to promote long-term food security.

Inclusive Decision Making

• Implementation of a >20% NWL area target poses challenges.
• Regardless of the starting point, conserving NWL requires coordination between different levels and sectors within governments, land owners and managers, corporations, and civil society organizations.
• The integration of different social actors in codesigning and managing NWL has already proven successful for a range of conservation problems across countries.
• Land stewardship pacts between working-lands stakeholders have delivered species conservation plans, sustainable farming practices, and habitat restoration initiatives by capitalizing on common interests.
• NWL restoration will require global and national policy targets, alongside local implementation agreements and plans, tailored to different socioeconomic conditions.
• Instruments such as eco-labeling (which creates markets for products grown in landscapes with NWL) and strengthening of social networks (to build trust and dialog among different land users and between them and policy, extension and research agents) are critical complements to national legislations for the success of the NWL implementation.
• Restoring NWL is just one crucial pathway toward a biosphere that sustains both biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.
• NWL may work best in combination with complementary transitions toward ecological intensification in the cultivated portions of landscapes, such as enhanced crop diversity and including service crops in rotations.
• Achieving the >20% target could be enacted in phases in currently low- to nonexistent NWL areas:
  • Such an incremental strategy would ease potential burdens on landowners while also enabling continued assessment of benefits and costs through adaptive management and policymaking.
• Knowledge on the role of NWL in providing nature’s contributions to people has accumulated in recent decades, offering numerous successful examples of NWL restoration and multiple associated benefits.
• Implementation of NWL restoration, especially through policy, remains limited, and NWL continue to be degraded and eliminated.
• Including a >20% NWL restoration target offer an unrivaled opportunity to simultaneously enhance biodiversity, food security and quality of life.

Restoration of native habitats within working landscapes (NWL) in at least 20% of land area

• What?
  • Native habitats are those dominated by native species of plants and are substantially similar in composition and structure to habitats that would have been present in the absence of intensive human activities. They can be grazed, mowed, harvested, or burned where that is consistent with continued biodiversity conservation.
• Where?
  • Working landscapes (outside protected areas) with >80% of land sowed or planted for farming, ranching, and/or forestry (Figure 1a). Holding sizes >10 ha.
• Why 20%?
  • This quantitative target stems from the review of scientific evidence (Table S3, supplementary materials), suggesting that at least 20% NWL is needed everywhere to support the provision of many of nature’s contributions to people simultaneously (not only crop productivity).
  • $1 km^2 = 100 ha$
• Spatial scale and configuration?
  • A “fractal perspective,” in which the >20% target can be applied at all spatial scales, from single fields to whole landscapes.
  • Enhancing and expanding existing patches of native habitat.
  • Areas traditionally sown and harvested but with lower crop productivity potential (Figure 5, Model S1, supplementary materials).
  • Borders of roads, fences, and in the vicinity of houses.
  • Environmentally sensitive areas (e.g., lowlands, river margins, and steep slopes).
  • Designs that promote interpatch connectivity.
• Time frame?
  • A >20% target could be implemented gradually within areas with low NWL.
  • Native habitats should be kept in place to allow for several generations of most native species and for the persistence (or re-establishment) of native communities over time.
  • The time frame should allow for recovery of soil fertility and establishment of a healthy soil seed bank.