%0 Journal Article
%T Strategic approaches to restoring ecosystems can triple conservation gains and halve costs
%J -
%D 2018
%R https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0743-8
%X 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 1£¿billion 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
%U https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0743-8