Increasing impacts of land use on biodiversity and carbon sequestration driven by population and economic growth

Abstract

Biodiversity and ecosystem service losses driven by land-use change are expected to intensify as a growing and more affluent global population requires more agricultural and forestry products, and teleconnections in the global economy lead to increasing remote environmental responsibility. By combining global biophysical and economic models, we show that, between the years 2000 and 2011, overall population and economic growth resulted in increasing total impacts on bird diversity and carbon sequestration globally, despite a reduction of land-use impacts per unit of gross domestic product (GDP). The exceptions were North America and Western Europe, where there was a reduction of forestry and agriculture impacts on nature accentuated by the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Biodiversity losses occurred predominantly in Central and Southern America, Africa and Asia with international trade an important and growing driver. In 2011, 33% of Central and Southern America and 26% of Africa's biodiversity impacts were driven by consumption in other world regions. Overall, cattle farming is the major driver of biodiversity loss, but oil seed production showed the largest increases in biodiversity impacts. Forestry activities exerted the highest impact on carbon sequestration, and also showed the largest increase in the 2000-2011 period. Our results suggest that to address the biodiversity crisis, governments should take an equitable approach recognizing remote responsibility, and promote a shift of economic development towards activities with low biodiversity impacts.

Figure 1. Production impacts on biodiversity and carbon sequestration per economic sectors.

a, Impacts in absolute terms for the year 2011; b, the difference between the impacts in 2011 and 2000. Negative values imply a decrease of their impacts by 2011. The left side are represents impending global bird extinctions (number of species) and on the right side carbon sequestration lost (MtC per year). Results are sorted by decreasing biodiversity impacts from production activities. The impacts of sectors accounting for less than 1% of the total are not shown. Nec stands for not elsewhere classified.

Figure 2. Decomposition of changes in impacts of agriculture and forestry on biodiversity and carbon sequestration into the contribution of the changes in population, GDP per capita and impact per GDP.

Biodiversity impacts are measured in terms of impending global bird extinctions, and ecosystem services impacts in terms of carbon sequestration lost. Impacts can be decomposed as (Methods): Δ Impacts = Δ Population × Δ GDP per capita (i.e., affluence) × Δ Impacts per GDP (i.e., land-use efficiency). Annual changes in production impacts relative to 2000 (Δ) at the global level for biodiversity (a) and ecosystem services (b), overall changes between 2000-2011 for different world regions for biodiversity (c) and ecosystem services (d).

Figure 3. GDP per capita (in constant 2011 international$) and per capita impacts on biodiversity and carbon sequestration, per world region.

Consumption and production impacts on biodiversity (a) as global impending bird extinctions (number of species per capita and year) and ecosystem services (b) as carbon sequestration lost (tC per capita and year). Consumption impacts are represented by a circle, production impacts by a square. The arrows show the trend on the impacts between 2000 (starting point) and 2011 (tip of the arrow). Inset map was created based on Natural Earth countries boundaries and the United Nations regional groups using ArcGIS software version 10.2.1.

Figure 4. Biodiversity (a,2000; b,2011) and carbon sequestration (c,2000; d,2011) impacts embodied in international trade.

On the left is the region where the impacts occur and on the right is the region whose consumption is driving the impacts. The width of the flows represents the magnitude of the impacts. Exact values can be found in Supplementary Tables 11-12. Impacts arising from domestic production and consumption are not included in this figure. The visualized impacts represent 22%, 25%, 19% and 21% of the yearly global totals, respectively for biodiversity and carbon sequestration lost.