Trade-offs between multifunctionality and profit in tropical smallholder landscapes

Grass, Ingo; Kubitza, Christoph; Krishna, Vijesh V.; Corre, Marife D.; Mußhoff, Oliver; Pütz, Peter; Drescher, Jochen; Rembold, Katja; Ariyanti, Eka Sulpin; Barnes, Andrew D.; Brinkmann, Nicole; Brose, Ulrich; Brümmer, Bernhard; Buchori, Damayanti; Daniel, Rolf; Darras, Kevin F. A.; Faust, Heiko; Fehrmann, Lutz; Hein, Jonas; Hennings, Nina; ... (2020). Trade-offs between multifunctionality and profit in tropical smallholder landscapes. Nature Communications, 11(1) Springer Nature 10.1038/s41467-020-15013-5

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Land-use transitions can enhance the livelihoods of smallholder farmers but potential economic-ecological trade-offs remain poorly understood. Here, we present an interdisciplinary study of the environmental, social and economic consequences of land-use transitions in a tropical smallholder landscape on Sumatra, Indonesia. We find widespread biodiversity-profit trade-offs resulting from land-use transitions from forest and agroforestry systems to rubber and oil palm monocultures, for 26,894 aboveground and belowground species and whole-ecosystem multidiversity. Despite variation between ecosystem functions, profit gains come at the expense of ecosystem multifunctionality, indicating far-reaching ecosystem deterioration. We identify landscape compositions that can mitigate trade-offs under optimal land-use allocation but also show that intensive monocultures always lead to higher profits. These findings suggest that, to reduce losses in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, changes in economic incentive structures through well-designed policies are urgently needed.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

13 Central Units > Administrative Director's Office > Botanical Garden
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) > Plant Ecology
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS)

UniBE Contributor:

Rembold, Katja, Jochum, Malte

Subjects:

500 Science > 580 Plants (Botany)

ISSN:

2041-1723

Publisher:

Springer Nature

Language:

English

Submitter:

Peter Alfred von Ballmoos-Haas

Date Deposited:

24 Mar 2020 16:19

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:37

Publisher DOI:

10.1038/s41467-020-15013-5

Related URLs:

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.141553

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/141553

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