ReviewA review of methods, data, and models to assess changes in the value of ecosystem services from land degradation and restoration
Introduction
It is becoming increasingly evident that allowing land to degrade is expensive, both to local owners and to society in general, in the short term, and especially, long-term (Costanza et al., 1997, Costanza et al., 2014, Bateman et al., 2013, Trucost, 2013, Von Braun et al., 2013). At RIO + 20 the United Nations Conference on Combatting Desertification (UNCCD) set a target of zero net land degradation (ELD-Initiative, 2013). This need to prevent further land degradation, whether that is natural or human-dominated systems, and to restore degraded lands is especially important now because the demand for accessible productive land is increasing as human population and consumption increase. The geography of these changes are projected to affect mainly tropical regions that are already vulnerable to other stresses, including the increasing unpredictability of rainfall patterns and extreme events as a result of climate change (IPCC, 2007, Foley et al., 2011).
Land degradation is a decline in the processes and productivity of these ecosystems over an extended period of time (Lal, 1997, MEA, 2005, DeFries et al., 2012) and as defined in the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Interim Report (ELD-Initiative, 2013) results in “the reduction in the economic value of ecosystem services and goods derived from land as a result of anthropogenic activities or natural biophysical evolution”. In short it is a consequence of poor management of natural capital (soils, water, vegetation, etc.). We need better frameworks to quantify the scale of the problem globally, to calculate the cost of business as usual (ELD-Initiative, 2013), and explicitly and essentially to assess the benefits of ecological restoration. The current methods are often underestimating the cost of change, as they assume restoration will lead to full recovery of ecological functions, which is not necessarily the case. Visionary farmers and business leaders are becoming aware that degradation of ecosystems may become material issues affecting their bottom line and future prosperity (ACCA et al., 2012). However, they lack decision tools to develop robust and effective solutions to the problem (ACCA et al., 2012, ELD-Initiative, 2013). The identification of sustainable management strategies on both farm and landscape levels could be facilitated by the development of integrated decision tools. This could be, for instance, sound cost–benefit frameworks (ELD-Initiative, 2013) accompanied by modeling and simulation techniques that enable the creation and evaluation of scenarios of alternative futures and other decision tools to address this gap (Farley and Costanza, 2002, Costanza et al., 2006, Costanza et al., 2013, Jarchow et al., 2012).
The managed land covers more than 60% of the Earth's land surface and approximately 60% of this is under agriculture (Ellis et al., 2010, Foley et al., 2011). Ecosystems contribute to human well-being in a number of complex ways at multiple scales of space and time (Costanza and Daly, 1992, MEA, 2005, Dasgupta, 2008, Lal, 2012, UNEP, 2012, Costanza et al., 2013). Ecosystem services, including agricultural products, clean air, fresh water, disturbance regulation, climate regulation, recreational opportunities, and fertile soils are jeopardized by the effects of land degradation, and it is a global phenomenon (Walker et al., 2002, Foley et al., 2005, MEA, 2005, UNEP, 2012, Von Braun et al., 2013).
There is a need to integrate agricultural production and other land uses with ecosystem preservation to avoid land degradation in the future and to begin to restore degraded lands (Acevedo, 2011). This involves a standardized framework with methods to quantify and compare the extent of land degradation across political, cultural, biophysical, and managerial boundaries.
The overall development goal of sustainable human well-being cannot be measured in the mere growth of the market economy (Costanza et al., 2013). To obtain sustainable well-being through improved land management depends on the interaction of four basic types of capital assets: built, human, social, and natural. For example, the value of ecosystem services is the relative contribution of natural capital in combination with the other three types of assets to produce sustainable well-being. Although it focuses on natural capital and ecosystem services, it recognizes that the understanding, modeling, and valuing of ecosystem services requires an integrated, transdisciplinary approach which includes all four types of capital and their complex interactions.
The aim of this paper is to identify and discuss the data and methods used to determine global land degradation and to assess the sustainability of alternative management strategies. Assessments on global scale are informative for awareness-raising of the scale of the problem, and aims to inform politicians and policy makers on the extent of this substantial problem. The first section discusses methods for valuing land-use and management options based on the four capitals and reviews the types of databases and information proxies that are available (a comprehensive list is available in the Supplementary information). We argue it is important to take an integrated approach to assess the impact of land degradation on human well-being.
The second section focuses on the valuation methods specifically used to quantify natural capital and ecosystem services. The definition of land degradation is a decline in the production of ecosystem services but these rarely figure in traditional economic assessments and thus misrepresent the state of the natural capital. This section also reviews a selection of available models that range from plot scale to global scale, which can be used to develop a method to analyze the impact of sustainable land management practices. Different models are useful for different decision-makers to assess the effects of management at diverse scales. The final part is a discussion of methodology and knowledge gaps and further actions to take in light of the findings of this review.
Section snippets
Methods for valuing land use and management
Valuation is a tool for assessing trade-offs for achieving a common goal (Farber et al., 2002). All decisions that involve trade-offs involve valuation, whether implicitly or explicitly (Costanza et al., 1997, Costanza et al., 2011b, Costanza et al., 2014). Historically, most land degradation valuations have been focused on marketed physical goods such as food, feed, fibers and fuel production using commodity prices (Barbier, 2000, Cowie et al., 2011, ELD-Initiative, 2013, Nkonya et al., 2013).
Valuation methods for natural capital and ecosystem services
To be able to assess the impacts and costs of land degradation on a larger scale, there is a need to take a broad and integrative approach, which includes both the capital stocks and flows that affect human well-being, as well as the linkages to external effects and livelihoods that are not based on the terrestrial surface. The first part of this paper has dealt with spatially specific mapping of the full range of capital stocks. In this section, we will look specifically at the value of the
Discussion
Although there is an impressive suite of models and frameworks to date that can help represent and analyze the context of land degradation, more information is needed to improve on the limitations mentioned. By adopting holistic spatially explicit models to improve on the shortcomings of current valuations of ecosystem services, and a broader estimation of human well-being, it will thus give a better reference point of the real global problem of land degradation than previous collective
Conclusions
We have collected and reviewed the valuation methods, the drivers and the models that can and are used in analyzing the effects of land management practices. Furthermore we include a collection of some of the most extensive global databases that harbor spatially explicit data on the biophysical, economic, institutional and practical drivers of sustainable land management. There are a lot of data, methods and models available, and the sheer amount warrants for extensive consolidation and
Acknowledgements
This paper was undertaken in collaboration with the Economics of Land Degradation Initiative (ELD), a project of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH (German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation), and prepared in part during a workshop at Lincoln University in Lincoln, New Zealand. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for all their valuable suggestions and contributions to improve the manuscript. Thank you to the Danish
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