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Valuing ecological restoration benefits cannot fully support landscape sustainability: a case study in Inner Mongolia, China

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Abstract

Context

Exploring the contribution of ecological restoration benefits to landscape sustainability is critical to the successful implementation, management, and maintenance of these projects, especially in the context of rapid global socioeconomic development and climate change.

Objectives

Taking a landscape sustainability perspective, this study aims to demonstrate the socioeconomic feasibility of ecological restoration using Inner Mongolia as an example and analyze the contribution of two dimensions, ecosystem services diversity and value, to sustainable landscape management.

Method

We developed a “value-diversity-risk” framework to evaluate landscape sustainability under current ecological restoration plans. We evaluated the ecological value, economic value, and ecosystem services diversity, analyzed the spatially overlapping relationships between different key restoration basins, and estimated the future risks to ecological restoration benefits based on shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) scenarios.

Results

The ecological and economic values generated by ecological restoration demonstrated spatial and temporal variation. The key restoration basins that can generate both ecological and economic value account for 23% of the total area. However, the overlap between key restoration basins that generated ecological value, economic value, and realized ecosystem services diversity is only 5%. By 2050, the demand for cultivated land and the expansion of built-up land will threaten 12,062 − 15,179 km2 of these ecological restoration areas, which will affect the sustainability of ecological restoration benefits, as the overlap between the key restoration basins of SSP1, SSP2 and SSP5 will become 2%, 0.5% and 0.3%, respectively.

Conclusions

The results suggest that investment in ecological restoration could be unsustainable if only economic values are considered, and a win-win situation is difficult for ecosystem services diversity and value maximization even if ecological values are considered. The possibility of this win-win situation is further diminished due to the severe effect of future risks on ecosystem services diversity. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust the ecological restoration strategy based on the diversity of ecosystem services, financial preparation for ecological restoration and the ability to control future risks.

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Data availability

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41991235, 42171088), the Science and Technology Project of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China (NMKJXM202109), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China, and the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (ASTIP).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, CN, China

    Chenxu Wang & Yanxu Liu

  2. Inner Mongolia Institute of Geological Survey, Hohhot, 010020, Inner Mongolia, CN, China

    Xin Liu & Wenguang Qiao

  3. Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, CN, China

    Mingyue Zhao

Authors
  1. Chenxu Wang
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  2. Yanxu Liu
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  3. Xin Liu
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  4. Wenguang Qiao
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Contributions

CW: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing—original draft. YL: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing—review & editing. XL: Methodology, Data curation, Writing—review & editing. WQ: Writing—review & editing. MZ: Methodology, Supervision.

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Correspondence to Yanxu Liu.

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Wang, C., Liu, Y., Liu, X. et al. Valuing ecological restoration benefits cannot fully support landscape sustainability: a case study in Inner Mongolia, China. Landsc Ecol 38, 3289–3306 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-023-01697-9

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