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The effectiveness of climate action and land recovery across ecosystems, climatic zones and scales

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Abstract

Current land-use and climate change patterns lead to disruption in ecosystem services provisioning essential for human well-being. Actions representing alternatives to business-as-usual trend can reduce negative impacts, but their effectiveness across ecosystems, climatic zones and scales is unclear. Here, we analyse how land recovery and climate action can counteract adverse effects of current trends on nature and safeguard provisioning of ecosystem services. Using a meta-analysis approach, we compiled 410 estimates of how land recovery or climate action may alter impacts expected from business-as-usual trends. We show that both alternatives can reduce negative effects on several nature indicators. The magnitude of the effects, however, is context-dependent, revealing their potential complementarity. Land recovery showed highest benefits in terrestrial and freshwater systems in temperate zones and mostly acts at subnational scale. Contrastingly, climate action is more important in coastal and oceanic systems and in tropical regions, where benefits are larger on a regional to global scale. Our results show that land recovery and climate action will be imperative to reduce risks that would be imposed on nature by business-as-usual trends otherwise. We conclude that a better evaluation of which contexts are best suited for certain actions is a first step towards securing nature and the ecosystem services necessary to guarantee human well-being and the fulfilment of the sustainability agenda.

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Acknowledgements

SM received a fellowship from the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES, Grant no. 001) and by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ, Grant Doutorado Nota 10). MMV received fellowships from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, Grant ID: 304309/2018-4). This paper was developed in the context of the Brazilian Research Network on Climate Change, supported by FINEP (Grant ID: 01.13.0353-00) and the National Institutes for Science and Technology in Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity Conservation, supported by CNPq (Grant ID: 465610/2014-5) and FAPEG (Grant ID: 201810267000023). APFP thanks for the support of the project APQ1-2019 from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ, Grant no. 249778).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Program in Ecology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Av. Carlos Chagas Filho, 373, Centro de Ciências da Saúde, Bloco A, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 21941-590, Brazil

    Stella Manes

  2. Ecology Department, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Mariana M. Vale

  3. Ecology Department, Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Aliny P. F. Pires

  4. Brazilian Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BPBES), Campinas, SP, Brazil

    Aliny P. F. Pires

  5. Brazilian Foundation for Sustainable Development (FBDS), Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Aliny P. F. Pires

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  1. Stella Manes
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Correspondence to Stella Manes.

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Manes, S., Vale, M.M. & Pires, A.P.F. The effectiveness of climate action and land recovery across ecosystems, climatic zones and scales. Reg Environ Change 22, 5 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-021-01866-z

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