Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration

Extensive ecosystem restoration is increasingly seen as central to conserving biodiversity and stabilising the Earth’s climate. Although ambitious national and global targets have been set, global priority areas accounting for spatial variation in benefits and costs have yet to be identified. This study develops and applies for the first time a multicriteria optimisation approach that identifies priority areas for restoration across all biomes and estimates their benefits and costs. It found out that restoring 15% of converted lands in priority areas could avoid 60% of expected extinctions, potentially saving 320 thousand species, while sequestering 299 GtCO2, or 30% of total CO2 increase in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. Including multiple biomes is key to achieving multiple benefits, and cost-effectiveness can increase up to sevenfold with optimised multicriteria spatial allocations. The results confirm the vast potential contributions of restoration to global challenges while underscoring the necessity of pursuing these goals synergistically.

This video illustrates the main findings of the study published in Nature magazine in October 2020, lead by brazilian sustainability scientist Bernardo Strassburg. Read the full article: https://rdcu.be/b8v3A

Key authors:

Bernardo Strassburg: Bernardo B.N. Strassburg is the coordinator of the Centre for Conservation and Sustainability Science (CSRio), executive director of the International Institute for Sustainability (IIS) and assistant professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Bernardo is an economist with a M.Sc. in environmental planning (focused on land-use change and ecosystem services in the Amazon), and Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences, focused on issues related to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+).

Robin Chazdon: Robin Chazdon is Professor Emerita in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at the University of Connecticut and part-time Research Professor with the Tropical Forests and People Research Centre at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. After 28 years as a university professor, Dr. Chazdon has served as the Executive Director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation and as Director of the NSF-funded Research Coordination Network PARTNERS (People and Reforestation in the Tropics), focused on understanding the socio-ecological drivers of reforestation in the tropics. She is a Senior Fellow with the World Resources Institute Global Restoration Initiative; a Senior Research Associate with the International Institute for Sustainability in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and adjunct professor at the University of Colorado.

Thomas M. Brooks: Thomas Brooks is Head of IUCN’s Science and Knowledge Unit. He is responsible for supporting the scientific underpinning to IUCN’s knowledge products, ensuring IUCN’s scientific engagement in peer biodiversity-science-related networks, and helping to strengthen the culture of science across the union. His areas of expertise include: biodiversity conservation, species extinction, The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™, protected areas, ornithology, geography, ecology, evolutionary biology

David Cooper: Dr. Harry David Cooper is Deputy Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Previously in the Secretariat of the Convention he served as Director, Division for Science, Assessment and Monitoring and led work to promote the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and national biodiversity strategies and action plans. His areas of expertise include: Policy and science related to biodiversity and global change. International environmental negotiations. Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture

Alvaro Iribarrem: Alvaro Iribarrem is chief of modeling at International Institute for Sustainability (IIS), research associate at Centre for Conservation and Sustainability Sciences (CSRio) and professor of systems dynamics in the Master of Sustainability Science at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). He has a bachelor's degree in Physics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Worked as a Ph.D. student at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) headquarters, in Garching bei München, from 2011 to 2012. Concluded his Ph.D. in Extragalactic Astrophysics in 2013. Worked as a research associate at the Ecosystems Services Management program at IIASA between 2014 and 2016.

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