Researchers from the University of York, in partnership with over a dozen institutions worldwide, have found that efforts to preserve or rewild natural habitats are shifting harmful land use to other parts of the world and will do more harm than good.
The study, announced on the University’s website, argues that ring-fencing land in wealthy countries with relatively low biodiversity will simply shift harmful land use to poorer countries, which may mean it actually disrupts areas which are home to far more species. The researchers explain that this will eventually result in a net decline in the planet’s number and variety of species, and call on the global community to acknowledge this “biodiversity leak”.
The team’s analysis suggests that reclaiming typical UK cropland for nature may be five times more damaging for global biodiversity than the benefit it provides local species, due to the displacement of production to more biodiverse regions.
The researchers say that while this “leakage” has been known about for decades, it is largely neglected in biodiversity conservation, and that it undermines a number of conservation actions including the EU’s environmental policies.
Jonathan Green, from Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) York, said: “This is a really important topic that rarely makes it outside of academia. It is a complex problem to address in practice, but it is a really important one and the more we talk about it, the more we can try to counter it.”
Writing in the journal Science, the experts point out that even the UN’s landmark Global Biodiversity Framework – aiming for 30% of the world’s land and seas to be conserved – makes no mention of the leakage problem.
Professor Andrew Balmford, from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, said: “As nations in temperate regions such as Europe conserve more land, the resulting shortfalls in food and wood production will have to be made up somewhere.
“Much of this is likely to happen in more biodiverse but often less well-regulated parts of the world, such as Africa and South America. Areas of much greater importance for nature are likely to pay the price for conservation efforts in wealthy nations unless we work to fix this leak.”
The experts call on governments and the conservation sector to take leakage far more seriously when making environmental policy, and point out that conservation organisations should seek to address the root of the problem by working to reduce the demand for high-footprint commodities such as red meat, rather than simply shifting where it is produced.