Environmental changes in biodiversity hotspot ecosystems of
South Ecuador: RESPonse and feedback effECTs (FOR2730)

Abstract:

Sustainable intensification of agricultural lands might reconcile the conservation of tropical forest with food production,but in-depth assessments considering uncertainty and extreme values are missing. Uncertainty prohibits mapping probabilities to potential future states or ranking these states in terms of their likelihood. This in turn hampers the assessment of possible decision outcomes. Here, we use simulations to investigate how uncertainty may influence the social acceptability of alternative land-use strategies to halt tropical deforestation (including sustainable intensification), based on indicators representing farmer satisfaction. The results show how extreme values (worst values) for indicators of farmer satisfaction may undermine the adoption of sustainable intensification. We demonstrate that a pure forest conservation strategy leads to lower food production, but outperforms a sustainable intensification strategy that maintains food security. Pure forest conservation performed better, i.e., could secure higher farmer satisfaction, than sustainable intensification across a range of indicator groups. This suggests strong barriers to achieving sustainable intensification. Using agricultural subsidies breaks the dominance of pure forest conservation by enhancing the economic returns of sustainable intensification. We discuss the importance of access to labor and farmers’ preferences for the use of already cleared lands, which achieved the worst values under sustainable intensification and conclude that any assessment of land-use strategies requires careful consideration of uncertainty and extreme values.

Abstract:

Abstract Conversion of tropical forests is among the primary causes of global environmental change. The loss of their important environmental services has prompted calls to integrate ecosystem services (ES) in addition to socio-economic objectives in decision-making. To test the effect of accounting for both ES and socio-economic objectives in land-use decisions, we develop a new dynamic approach to model deforestation scenarios for tropical mountain forests. We integrate multi-objective optimization of land allocation with an innovative approach to consider uncertainty spaces for each objective. These uncertainty spaces account for potential variability among decision-makers, who may have different expectations about the future. When optimizing only socio-economic objectives, the model continues the past trend in deforestation (1975–2015) in the projected land-use allocation (2015–2070). Based on indicators for biomass production, carbon storage, climate and water regulation, and soil quality, we show that considering multiple ES in addition to the socio-economic objectives has heterogeneous effects on land-use allocation. It saves some natural forest if the natural forest share is below 38%, and can stop deforestation once the natural forest share drops below 10%. For landscapes with high shares of forest (38%–80% in our study), accounting for multiple ES under high uncertainty of their indicators may, however, accelerate deforestation. For such multifunctional landscapes, two main effects prevail: (a) accelerated expansion of diversified non-natural areas to elevate the levels of the indicators and (b) increased landscape diversification to maintain multiple ES, reducing the proportion of natural forest. Only when accounting for vascular plant species richness as an explicit objective in the optimization, deforestation was consistently reduced. Aiming for multifunctional landscapes may therefore conflict with the aim of reducing deforestation, which we can quantify here for the first time. Our findings are relevant for identifying types of landscapes where this conflict may arise and to better align respective policies.

Abstract:

Increasing demands for livelihood resources in tropical rural areas have led to progressive clearing of biodiverse natural forests. Restoration of abandoned farmlands could counter this process. However, as aims and modes of restoration differ in their ecological and socio-economic value, the assessment of achievable ecosystem functions and bene?ts requires holistic investigation. Here we combine the results from multidisciplinary research for a unique assessment based on a normalization of 23 ecological, economic and social indicators for four restoration options in the tropical Andes of Ecuador. A comparison of the outcomes among afforestation with native alder or exotic pine, pasture restoration with either low-input or intense management and the abandoned status quo shows that both variants of afforestation and intense pasture use improve the ecological value, but low-input pasture does not. Economic indicators favour either afforestation or intense pasturing. Both Mestizo and indigenous Saraguro settlers are more inclined to opt for afforestation.

Abstract:

This paper analyses the effectiveness and distributional effects of payments to avoid tropical deforestation. As a first aspect, we investigated whether or not expected payments for avoided deforestation would be acceptable for tropical farmers in Southern Ecuador, with the study area located directly adjacent to the Podocarpus National Park. Second, we explored possible distributional effects resulting from voluntary or mandatory remuneration schemes to avoid deforestation. Finally, a productive sustainable land use was conceptualised to be combined with payments for avoided deforestation to avoid leakage (i.e. deforestation processes elsewhere when avoided at a given farm). Farm level land use scenarios with ("business as usual") and without deforestation ("conservation strategy") were compared. Compensation per Mg Carbon (C) that is not emitted into the atmosphere under the "conservation strategy" was derived to achieve a monetary land net present value (NPV, sum of discounted future net revenues) equal to the NPV obtained under "business as usual". Avoided carbon emissions were computed from above ground C in tropical forests of the project area and supplemented by information on soil carbon from another study. Economic data for cattle pasturing were obtained from a farm survey (130 households) to investigate distributional effects. To derive sustainable land use concepts, a risk sensitive bioeconomic farm model was used that considered effects of risk compensation when combining pasture with reforestation of abandoned farm lands and selective logging of natural forests. The results showed that only a few farmers (20 out of 130) would possibly accept a compensation price of US$ 10 per Mg avoided C emission, a C-compensation that is believed by other authors to reduce deforestation by 65%. Rather a compensation of around US$ 25 per Mg C was necessary to address compensation requirements of farmers who hold 50% of the tropical forest area in our study. The implementation of a voluntary remuneration scheme for avoided deforestation would not introduce systematic distributional effects (such as that only the biggest farmers would benefit from compensation), while a mandatory and enforced ban on deforestation coupled with a "fair" compensation payment equal to mean compensation requirements may lead to undesirable effects for many farmers. Finally, we demonstrate a mixed sustainable land use concept that depended on cheap credits for reforestation of abandoned pasture lands. This concept was able to stop farm level deforestation and to enlarge the economic value of farms through various combined land use options (agricultural and forestry options). The combination of land uses led to risk compensatory effects and a more efficient land use by reintegrating unproductive abandoned areas back into the economical process. In our conclusion a combination of payments for avoided deforestation along with productive land use concepts provided a viable solution for tropical forest conservation.