Prioritising land use in the midst of a climate and nature emergency

PRIORITISING LAND USE IN THE MIDST OF A CLIMATE AND NATURE

EMERGENCY

Ten key messages for scientists, civil society, and policy makers

AUTHORS:

Nathalie Pettorelli1, Jake Williams1, Heiko Balzter2, Paul Behrens3, Tim Benton4, Guy Cowlishaw1, Peter Cruddas5, Lynn V. Dicks6, Tara Garnett7, Matthew Gould8, Jane King9, Janette Webb10

AFFILIATIONS

1 Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, London, UK

2 Space Park Leicester, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

3 Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, The Netherlands

4 Environment and Society Centre, Chatham House, London, UK

5 School of Civil Engineering and Surveying, University of Portsmouth, UK

6 Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK

7 Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, UK

8 Zoological Society of London, London, UK

9 Zero Hour, Chelmsford, UK

10 School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, UK

CITATION:

Pettorelli, N., Williams, J., Balzter, H., Behrens, P.A., Benton, T., Cowlishaw, G., Cruddas, P., Dicks, L.V., Garnett, T., Gould, M., King, J., Webb, J. (2024) Prioritising Land Use in the Midst of a Climate and Nature Emergency - Ten Key Messages for Scientists, Civil Society, and Policy Makers. A report from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the British Ecological Society (BES), London, UK

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Harriet McAra and Andrew Terry for their help with the organisation of the Land Use Summit, on which this report is based. We are grateful to Jonathan Wentworth, Tom Finch, Linda DaVolls, Rebecca Blanchard, Rob Booth and Joanna Bromley for their comments on earlier drafts of this report.

CONTACT:

Nathalie Pettorelli, Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, Regent’s Park, London NW1 4RY nathalie.pettorelli@ioz.ac.uk

MATTHEW GOULD, ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON (ZSL) CEO

The bottom line is that we don’t have enough land to do all the things we want to do. Different parts of Government come up with strategies to address different problems – pledging to build more houses, develop infrastructure, improve food security, reach net zero, and improve biodiversity. Yet added together, all these promises use far more land than we actually have.

This is a serious problem. To address it, we need to take three key steps:

FIRST,

we need an integrated approach to how we use our finite amount of land. Governments need to take the lead, starting with an honest debate about the trade-offs an integrated approach will require.

SECONDLY,

we need to be smart about how we get the most out of our land, in a sustainable way. We need to farm productively but in ways that maximise biodiversity. We need a housing strategy that supports our net zero goals as well. We need climate solutions that work for nature, and vice versa.

THIRDLY,

we need to underpin all this with strong science and data. We need to understand what works and what doesn’t, what the interplay is between different goals and approaches, and where the gaps in our understanding are.

Without these three steps, we are condemned to fantasy policy-making – promising undeliverable and mutually exclusive outcomes, and masking the damage we are doing to nature and climate by exporting our negative impact to countries we can pay to damage their environment so we can preserve our own.

The onus is not just on Government. It will need a shared commitment from farmers, housebuilders, energy companies, local councils, residents and businesses. We will need to forge a shared approach where the common goal is clear, and the trade-offs can be made consciously and democratically.

WITHOUT THESE THREE STEPS, WE ARE CONDEMNED TO FANTASY POLICY-MAKING

Conservation organisations like ZSL have a role to play here too, in ensuring that nature is properly factored into our approach to other objectives, like net zero and the wider economic framework. This will need conservation to widen its aperture, and look both at species and ecosystems, and at social needs and the economic framework.

Getting land use right will be difficult and require painful choices. But pretending those choices don’t exist will lead us to a much worse place. We can do better – the Land Use Summit we hosted showed both deep expertise in every aspect of land use, and a strong desire to come together to forge a common path. ZSL will continue to do all it can to help this common approach succeed.

6.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Reorganising land use to secure a sustainable future for all requires embracing systemslevel changes that confront key tenets of current economic models and redefine our entire relationship with nature. Using the United Kingdom as a case study, this report assesses the opportunities and challenges to developing a coordinated approach to land use amid increasingly variable and uncertain environmental and economic conditions.

Humanity is facing an unparalleled environmental crisis. Six of the nine planetary boundaries are believed to have been already transgressed, drastically increasing the risk of generating large-scale abrupt and/or irreversible environmental changes. Of particular concern are the rapid changes in climatic conditions, which are projected to cause £30 trillion of destruction each year by midcentury, and the catastrophic decline in nature, with one million of the world’s estimated eight million species of plants and animals at risk of extinction.

The scale and speed of these changes are threatening food security, and expected to trigger mass movements in human populations, which will destabilise national economies and politics. In response to the overwhelming scientific consensus on the urgent need to tackle the current nature and climate emergency, nations around the world have committed to decarbonising their economies, protecting nature and reversing the degradation of ecosystems. Land, climate, nature and people are yet highly entwined: meeting these commitments will require transformational changes in the way we use our lands, with profound ramifications for food and energy production, as well as housing and infrastructure development.

Highlighting key considerations for prioritising future land use systems, and underscoring the role of science and innovation to address critical knowledge gaps and develop prioritisation tools fit for purpose, this report identifies ten key messages to support national land use transitions. These include ensuring that land policy is connected to a whole-government programme of transformative change; that all stakeholders develop and promote actions that reduce demands on our lands; and that a land use forecasting infrastructure and national environmental observatory are established to accelerate opportunities for transdisciplinary research, to ensure our lands provide as many benefits as possible and to support land use prioritisation. The report also calls for a national campaign to pursue an agreement on an integrated vision for the future of our lands with a commitment to a clear economic and societal pathway.

The International Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services estimates that declines in nature and biodiversity at current trajectories will undermine progress toward 35 out of 44 of the targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land. Despite this, there is a risk that other challenges may be prioritised over nature recovery. To ensure that wildlife recovery is given the attention it requires, the biodiversity and conservation community needs to engage with, help develop, and push for whole-society approaches that firmly integrate nature into environmental, but also economic and social policies.

KEY MESSAGES

TO SCIENTISTS

1. Generate evidence and solutions in collaboration with those who are responsible for the land

2. Make multifunctionality measurable and applicable

3. Ensure that land is included as a system in research

TO CIVIL SOCIETY

4. Help initiate a nuanced national conversation on land demands

5. Engage with new thinking around fiscal policy

6. Bring nature into economic and social policies

TO POLICY MAKERS

7. Address both supply and demand sides

Science and innovation can provide the evidence and analytical tools needed to support decision-makers as they navigate difficult decisions. To ensure relevance, feasibility and uptake, evidence and solutions need to be generated and co-designed with those responsible for the land.

Our lands can be managed to offer multiple simultaneous benefits; whenever possible, these win-wins should be identified and prioritised.

For science and innovation to effectively support decision-making around land use change, a transdisciplinary approach that adopts a land system perspective and focuses on improving our understanding of the interplays between the social and ecological dimensions of these systems is required.

Demand-side issues are a potentially important route to squaring the complex circle we are found in, but to date, such issues have been absent from political discourse in any meaningful sense. There is a need for a more nuanced conversation on land demands, amongst citizens and civil society, that engages politicians in a meaningful way.

A fundamental realigning of economic incentives that reflects the true value of nature in the economy may be the best and most lasting guarantee of a sustainable land use system. There is a growing body of precedent and research around the world on how this could be done, much of which relating to changes to fiscal policy.

To ensure that wildlife recovery is given the attention it requires, the environmental community needs to engage with, help develop and push for whole-society approaches that redefine our entire relationship with nature, firmly integrating nature into environmental, but also economic and social policies.

Negotiating the societal and economic transition needed to stabilise our climate and recover our wildlife is not just about optimising outputs on multiple dimensions from our lands; it is also about starting national conversations on demands and waste: ultimately, as the economic demand for the goods from land can grow unchecked, but the ability to meet this demand sustainably cannot, there comes a point where land demands must become a target for planning.

8. Develop a wholegovernment and integrated land use management approach

9. Build a land use forecasting infrastructure

10. Establish a national environmental observatory

Long-term economic decline, low productivity, trade – both imports and exports – of goods from land, the housing crisis, poor public health from diets, fears of ecosystem collapse and associated loss of ecosystem services delivery, the risk of food system failure, and increasing climate instability – these challenges are connected and addressing them will involve transformational system-scale solutions. This calls for a whole-government approach to land use management, underpinned by an integrated land use strategy that aligns simultaneously with the Paris Agreement, the Global Biodiversity Framework and the SDGs, and that promotes innovative solutions that deliver, at the same time, benefits for climate, nature, and people.

The creation of a forecasting infrastructure for land use could provide a platform for innovation and progress in the integration of economic, ecological and climatic models, while guaranteeing long-term consistency and coherence in their development and use.

Forecasting models will need to be parametrised with robust data. These data should be of diverse nature (including climatic, ecological, economic, social), interoperable and countrywide; they should be made accessible through the creation of a national environmental observatory.

INTRODUCTION

Our lands underpin our economy and wellbeing: all of us depend on land for our food, energy, housing, and many of our day-to-day activities. Yet land is a finite resource under growing pressure, both nationally and internationally. Rapid climatic change and unprecedented biodiversity loss are driving critical changes in the wealth generation of land. Increasingly, the economic demands placed on our lands exceed their capacity, resulting in catastrophic environmental, economic and health consequences. How we respond to these pressures and prioritise land use will shape opportunities to stabilise our climate, adapt to new climatic conditions, recover nature, and secure a sustainable future for all.

Deciding what to do is complex, yet action is required now. This report synthetises the outcomes of the Land Use Summit organised by the Zoological Society of London in collaboration with the British Ecological Society in Spring 2024. It provides an overview of the opportunities and challenges associated with meeting the multiple demands on land in the midst of increasingly variable and uncertain environmental and economic conditions, and reflects on ways to develop and coordinate responses to these multiple demands.

The report first introduces how land use relates to the current climate and nature crises, and how it drives physical and mental health, economic growth, and democratic health. Critical priorities for land use planning are then identified, using the United Kingdom (UK) to demonstrate how these priorities are underpinned by international and national legislations and targets (Figure 1). Key considerations and challenges associated with land use prioritisation are subsequently discussed, before highlighting important knowledge gaps that need to be addressed to ensure that nature benefits from future land use reorganisations. Finally, the report provides a series of recommendations for policy makers, scientists and the environmental sector.

Land use and land use change can be understood in multiple ways: in this report, land use refers to the social and economic description of a given piece of land, providing information on its use, which can be linked to residential, industrial, commercial, farming, forestry, recreational or conservation purposes (among others). This is different to land cover, which only provides information on the physical land type (e.g., forest, lake, grassland). Changes in land use are defined as changes that are associated with changes in land cover type (for example, the replacement of forests by croplands), and/or changes in land use intensity (defined as the degree of adoption of land management practices enabling resource extraction increases from a given area of land; Ellis et al., 2013; Kuemmerle et al., 2013).

Sixth largest economy globally

67 million people

70% of land devoted to agriculture

One of the most nature-depleted countries in the world

43% of wealth held by top 10% richest households

Ranks among the worst countries for mental health

17th largest greenhouse gas emitter

Highest proportion of wealth tied up in land of any G7 country

Real wages in 2024 comparable to those in 2008

Figure 1: The UK in numbers. Information from the House of Commons Library (2021), Office for National Statistics (2021a), Bloomberg (2022), Burns et al. (2023), National Statistics (2023), Resolution Foundation & Centre for Economic Performance (2023), Sapien Labs (2024).

LAND USE AS A DRIVER OF CLIMATE CHANGE, BIODIVERSITY LOSS AND HUMAN WELLBEING

2.1 LAND USE AS A DRIVER OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Our climate is rapidly changing, with 2023 around 1.48˚C warmer than the pre-industrial long-term average (Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2024). An increasing average global temperature has driven a variety of different environmental changes, including changes in precipitations and seasonal patterns, ocean acidification, and changes in the frequency of extreme weather events, such as droughts, storms, heatwaves, fires and floods. Many of the changes we are set to witness are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Some of these changes are already set in motion – such as continued sea level rise –and irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years. The burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions (IPCC, 2019).

Climate change is already affecting every region on Earth, in multiple ways. In the UK, for example, all ten of the warmest years on record have occurred since 2003, and in July 2022 temperatures exceeded 40°C for the first time on record (Met Office, 2023). In the next 50 years, climate change is predicted to lead to winters being between 1 and 4.5°C warmer and up to 30% wetter; summers to be between 1 and 6°C warmer and up to 60% drier; and weather extremes to be more frequent and intense, with, for example, the country being forecasted

to experience flash floods twice as often as it did in 1990 (Met Office, 2020). There are suggestions that these predictions, based on global models, may be too conservative, and that the rate of global heating is accelerating (Hansen et al., 2023).

Land use plays an important role in global cycles of greenhouse gases, with soils and terrestrial organisms storing more than twice as much carbon as the atmosphere (Falkowski et al., 2000). How land is used can either cause the release or sequestration of greenhouse gases. In the UK, around 80% of land is used for agriculture and forestry combined, contributing about 12% to the UK’s net greenhouse gas emissions (Climate Change Committee, 2020a). Within this, lowland drained and cultivated peat soils are both the largest source of land use emissions, and major centres of field vegetable production (Evans et al., 2017; Rhymes et al., 2023).

Certain forms of agriculture can increase soil carbon and nitrous oxide emissions; others, such as some forms of regenerative agriculture (Box 1), might be able to increase soil carbon sequestration (Jordon et al., 2022; Rehberger et al., 2023). Likewise, forestry can help sequester carbon if timber is put to semi-permanent uses. However, whether these effects are meaningful depends on the counterfactual used (Ehrenstein & Muniesa, 2013); for example, soil carbon content may increase from baseline under regenerative agriculture but may still be lower than if the land was taken out of agricultural production altogether.

BOX 1: REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE (OR REGENERATIVE FARMING)

Regenerative agriculture is one of several soil stewardship approaches (which also include organic farming and conservation agriculture) that is being promoted as a solution for a sustainable food system (Schreefel et al., 2020). The term currently does not have a comprehensively described scientific definition, but it is widely acknowledged that regenerative agriculture proceeds from a foundation of promoting soil health (Beacham et al., 2023). Five principles are often used to characterise regenerative agriculture, namely (i) keeping soil surfaces covered, (ii) maintaining living roots year-round, (iii) minimising soil disturbance, (iv) growing a diverse range of crops, and (v) bringing grazing animals back to the land (Beacham et al., 2023), with some adding a sixth, (vi) reducing synthetic chemical inputs. To date, only the Scottish Government has been referring directly to regenerative agriculture in some of its policy documents, with England, Wales and Northern Ireland preferring terms such as ‘sustainable farming’ or ‘sustainable land management’.

Evidence for the positive effects of some individual regenerative practices on soil organic carbon is building (Rehberger et al., 2023). For example, a recent study focusing on Great Britain showed that cover cropping could on average increase soil organic carbon stocks by 10t per hectare within 30 years of adoption, potentially sequestering 6.5Mt of CO2 per year (Jordon et al., 2022). Evidence for the agronomic and environmental outcomes of regenerative agriculture as a whole system of change is currently sparse, coming primarily from the United States, where it was shown, for example, that regenerative fields had 29% lower grain production but 78% higher profits over traditional corn production systems (LaCanne & Lundgren, 2018). Diversification of products is a central principle underpinning this difference, with regenerative farmers spreading their risk and receiving income from a greater range of sources.

2.2 LAND USE AS A DRIVER OF BIODIVERSITY LOSS

Climate change is not the only crisis threatening humanity; the scale of nature loss is equally concerning (Figure 2). Our world has experienced an estimated 69% average loss in the abundance of mammal, bird, reptile, fish and amphibian species between 1970 and 2018 (WWF, 2022). This trend is projected to intensify in the future: according to the International Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), up to one million plant and animal species are likely to be under threat of extinction globally, many of them before 2100 (IPBES, 2019).

Nature is not a mere ‘nice to have’; the loss of nature has far-reaching consequences for human wellbeing. Damaged ecosystems undermine ecosystem services delivery (clean air, clean water, raw material provision, medicine), threaten food security, dramatically increase our risk of exposure to zoonotic spillovers, and exacerbate the impacts of pollution on people. It has been estimated that declines in nature and biodiversity at current trajectories will undermine progress toward 35 out of 44 of the targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land (IPBES, 2019).

Figure 2: Nature loss in numbers. Statistics extracted from IPBES (2019), WWF (2022) and Burns et al. (2023).

Nature loss is not homogeneously distributed across the world. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth, having lost around half of its biodiversity since the Industrial Revolution and continuing to lose nature at an alarming rate. Since 1970, UK species have declined by 19% on average, and nearly 1 in 6 species (16.1%) in Great Britain are now threatened with extinction. Out of the habitats that are important for wildlife, only 14% were found to be in a good ecological state, including just 7% of woodlands and 25% of peatlands (Burns et al., 2023).

Land use and land use change is recognised as the biggest threat to nature (Maxwell et al., 2016): to date, 75% of ice-free land and 63% of oceans have already been transformed by humans in some way (IPBES, 2019). The dominant threats to biodiversity from land use are direct: ecosystem loss via conversion of land cover to agricultural or urban uses; ecosystem fragmentation that occurs on land between ecosystem patches, and ecosystem degradation when lower intensity land uses take place, such as low-intensity agriculture or forestry. Indirect threats associated with land use include pollution and the facilitation of invasive species spread. These threats play out at all levels of biodiversity, from genes to ecosystems.

Land use effects are not isolated to terrestrial ecosystems but are also key drivers of change in freshwater and marine ecosystems due to their extensive connections to terrestrial systems, through processes such as nutrient cycles and animal migration. For example, nutrient pollution from livestock farming in the UK is a major concern for freshwater and coastal ecosystems, with rivers in England and Northern Ireland now widely considered to be in acute crisis (The Rivers Trust, 2024).

2.3 LAND USE AS A DRIVER OF HUMAN WELLBEING

2.3.1 Land use as a driver of physical and mental health

Our health is highly intertwined with the management of our lands. First, land use relates to our diet, with countries consuming large amount of animal proteins generally also devoting large tracts of land to livestock production. Livestock rearing requires proportionally more land per calorie consumed than plant-based diets, as land is required to keep animals and produce food for them. Livestock keeping can also generate significant levels of pollution, including high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. High levels of animal protein consumption can be detrimental to physical health, being correlated, among other things, with higher cardiovascular disease occurrence (see e.g., Najjar, 2023), although the evidence base here is complex. In the UK, dietary-related illnesses are estimated to cost approximately £74 billion every year in lost workforce productivity, reduced life expectancy and the burden on the National Health Service (Food Foundation, 2022).

Second, large-scale changes in land use, particularly agricultural expansion and intensification, have already forced tens of thousands of species into closer contact with humans, increasing the exchange of pathogens and the emergence of new diseases and pandemics (IPBES, 2020).

Third, contact with nature is known to benefit physical and mental wellbeing, and overall quality of life (Aerts et al., 2018). Access to green space, in particular, is increasingly being found to correlate with self-reported mental and physical health (White et al., 2021), supporting increased physical activity, helping reduce stress and

promoting social interactions. A systematic literature review of over 3000 published articles concluded that there is evidence of a positive association between urban green space and attention, mood, and physical activity, and negative association with mortality, short-term cardiovascular markers (heart rate), and violence (Kondo et al., 2018).

The distribution of access to green spaces in countries such as the UK, where mental health outcomes are among the worst in the world (Sapien Labs, 2024), is yet highly unequal. For example, in England roughly a fifth of the population have access to ‘very small’ amounts of green space; this deprivation is worse for people on lower incomes and black, Asian and minority ethnic groups (Friends of the Earth, 2020). Access to private land – a source of green space – is regulated differently in the four nations of the UK, with Scotland allowing all people the right to roam on almost all land, Wales providing free access to about 20% of all land, England allowing a right to roam on about 8% of all land, and Northern Ireland prohibiting access to almost all private land. These differences can have severe implications for human health and wellbeing: inequalities in land ownership and access are highly visible, and there is growing evidence that the visibility of such extreme inequality negatively influences health outcomes (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010).

The impacts of land use on health are exacerbated by the background challenge of demographic change – the ageing population. As the average citizen becomes older the importance of health increases. This is both in terms of extending working life to increase the worker-to-dependent ratio and reducing chronic illness to reduce average health care spend per citizen (Bloom & Zucker, 2023).

2.3.2 Land use as a driver of economic growth

Land use influences the economy via multiple mechanisms. Most economic activities require a physical location where they are undertaken, and the ability to access this land, and adjust its uses to new technological developments, is therefore important for economic growth. Although agriculture does not always contribute much to the national Growth Domestic Product (GDP), it can be an important employer in rural areas. In the UK, for example, the contribution of agriculture to the economy (Gross Value Added at basic prices) in 2022 was £13.9 billion (0.6% of GDP; Defra, 2023b).

In countries whose economies are focused on services, such as the UK, the key consideration is how land interacts with other factors of production, in particular finance, labour (or human capital), and natural capital. Here, land use and ownership play a significant role in the allocation of private and public financial capital: in England, for example, around half of the land is owned by 1% of the population, with similar land ownership concentrations expected across the UK (Shrubsole, 2019). The UK has the highest proportion of wealth tied up in land of any G7 country, at 60% (Office for National Statistics, 2021b), contributing to chronic underinvestment in business and productive assets, which is strongly associated with reduced growth rates (Van Reenen & Yang, 2023). Underinvestment is thought to be the main reason for the UK’s slower productivity growth than comparable countries (Van Reenen & Yang, 2023). In addition, overinvestment in land can contribute to macroeconomic instability (Asadov et al., 2023).

Mental and physical health deterioration, partly related to land use and access as discussed above, is also driving an increasing number of people out of the workforce in many developed countries, as well as impacting the number of workdays lost to ill health (The Health Foundation, 2023), ultimately decreasing productivity (Santini et al., 2022). Deteriorating average mental and physical health requires increased public spending, reducing the fiscal space for public investment, which is already constrained by high and increasing debt levels across the world. Finally, land use shapes the state of our natural capital, influencing ecosystem service provision. Land use leading to biodiversity loss and deteriorating ecosystem services delivery has economic consequences (as these services need to be compensated for) that negatively impact total economic output.

2.3.3 Land use and democracy: inequality, transparency and democratic control Democratic control and transparency in land use governance is important for democratic health. Opaque and concentrated land ownership models, where a few unknown parties own most of the land, increases economic inequality in a very visible manner, which may subsequently promote populism (Bischi et al., 2020) and political instability (Jetten et al., 2021). Such political responses may not only be due to inequalities per se, but also to the increasing isolation of economic policies that are responsible for these inequalities (Bergsen et al., 2022). This isolation comes both from (i) removing economic policy levers from democratic control (such as, for example, moving monetary policy into the competency of central banks) and (ii) framing decisions over economic policy as technocratic, and beyond political or democratic debate.

IN ENGLAND, AROUND HALF OF THE LAND IS OWNED BY 1% OF THE POPULATION

Perhaps the most important land-related UK example of this is the land subsidy and tax regime. National democratic discussion of the scale and structure of agrienvironment subsidies, which act to increase the returns to landowners (most recently the Environmental Land Management scheme in England), has been limited. These subsidies often inflate land prices as they offer a consistent return for that parcel of land, increasing further the net wealth going to land, reducing overall investment. The case is similar for democratic discussion on the taxation of land ownership, despite potentially huge gains to economic growth alongside redistributive effects (Goodhart et al., 2021).

LAND USE PRIORITIES

The previous section of this report focused on articulating how land use and land use change are strong determinants of the current nature and climate crises, and shape our physical and mental health, economic growth, and the health of democracy. In this section, we look at key government responsibilities that shape demands on lands. We focus on the biggest sources of demands, namely food production and security, nature conservation and recovery, actions relating to climate change mitigation and adaptation, energy production and security, and housing and infrastructure development.

3.1 FOOD PRODUCTION AND SECURITY

A primary responsibility of any Government is to ensure that the people they represent are fed effectively; as such, food security is a key priority for politicians around the world. It is generally acknowledged that food security is achieved when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. To achieve food security, nutritious food needs to be physically available, as well as physically

and economically accessible: as such, food security in a given country is shaped by global food availability; national food production; supply chain reach, strength and resilience; as well as food quality and affordability.

In many developed countries, such as the UK, food security is heavily underpinned by global food production and trade. The UK Government has set itself a target of maintaining its self-sufficiency in food at just over 60% (Defra, 2021a), and the country currently imports around 46% of the food it consumes. Recent events such as wars and epidemics have reminded western nations of the fragility of the food supply chain, leading many countries to review their approaches to food security. In the UK, for example, the Government passed the 2020 Agriculture Act, creating a statutory duty to publish a report on food security at least every three years.

3.2 BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION

The conclusion of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity saw the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework by 188 governments and a commitment to address the ongoing loss of terrestrial and marine biodiversity. The 23 targets to be achieved by 2030 include restoring 30% of all degraded ecosystems (Target 2) and conserving 30% of land, sea and inland waters (Target 3). Nature recovery, and the associated land demands to achieve it, is thus a firm priority globally.

The UK as a whole has adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Environmental policies are largely devolved in the UK, meaning that the English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Governments are the decision-makers on issues relating to agriculture, forestry and nature recovery. To further boost nature recovery, the four nations have committed to a number of principles (most notably, the Lawton principles; Lawton et al., 2010) and additional nature targets (many of which are stated in the Environment Act), which include (i) halting the decline in species abundance by 2030, (ii) ensuring that species abundance in 2042 is greater than in 2022, and at least 10% greater than 2030, (iii) improving the Red List Index of endangered species by 2042, (iv) restoring or creating in excess of 500,000 hectares of a range of wildliferich habitat outside protected sites by 2042, compared to 2022 levels, and (v) enlarging the area of England covered by National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty from 27% to 30%, a 3% increase that amounts to around 1.8 million acres (UK Government, 2021; Defra, 2021b, 2022a, 2022b).

To deliver on these targets in England, the Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has appointed 48 responsible authorities to lead on preparing a local nature recovery strategy for their area; together these 48 strategy areas cover the whole of England with no gaps or overlaps. The Environment Act 2021 also created a new biodiversity

BOX 2: DIET, FOOD AND NATURE RECOVERY

Diet is a critical factor influencing land use and greenhouse gas emissions: it has been estimated that the global food system emits around a third of global emissions (Rosenzweig et al., 2020). These emissions largely occur from food production and from land being cleared for food production. An analysis by Clark et al. (2020) explored how global food system emissions might be reduced through five strategies that target food supply and demand, namely (i) globally adopting a plant-rich diet (defined as a diet rich in plant-based foods that contains moderate amounts of dairy, eggs, and meat); (ii) adjusting global per capita caloric consumption to healthy levels; (iii) achieving high yields by closing yield gaps

net gain condition for planning permissions, with developments required to leave the natural environment in a measurably better state than it was before. Environmental Land Management schemes were also recently launched in England, whereby farmers and land managers will be paid for undertaking environmentally beneficial activities on their land. Local nature recovery strategies are expected to enable farmers and land managers to better understand and determine if there are actions that they could undertake that would have particular benefit in their areas.

3.3 CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION

3.3.1

Greenhouse gas emissions

By signing up to the Paris Agreement, governments around the world have pledged to decarbonise their economies by significantly reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and/or increasing greenhouse gas removals in the decades to come. Countries such as the UK have gone even further, by legally committing to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. Land use is a strong determinant of greenhouse gas emissions: in the UK, the food system alone accounts for around 20% of emissions (ignoring emissions from the food it imports); agriculture is responsible for 11% of total emissions, with other aspects of food system giving rise to the remaining 9% (Defra, 2024).

and improving crop genetics and agronomic practices; (iv) reducing food loss and waste by 50%; and (v) increasing the efficiency of food production. The authors found that shifting to a plant-rich diet would save the most emissions; if all five strategies were to be partially implemented together (50% adoption of each), cumulative emissions through 2100 could be reduced by 63% relative to business as usual. Importantly, because meat production is associated with much higher land demands than plant-based food production, diet shifts, particularly in high-income nations, would reduce overall pressures on land for food production. It has been estimated that the restoration of the resulting spared lands could significantly increase carbon sequestration potential globally, with up to 98.3 (55.6–143.7) Gt CO2

equivalent sequestered annually (Sun et al., 2022a). The restoration of these spared lands could also support wildlife recovery and access to nature, while providing space for new green infrastructure to increase nations’ resilience to extreme climatic events.

One of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases from agriculture relates to methane from livestock and manure, with livestock production estimated to contribute about 11%–17% of greenhouse gas emissions globally.

Following the adoption of the Paris Agreement, nations have adopted a suite of climate action policies to deliver on their commitments, with outcomes of these policies generally assessed by independent organisations. In the UK, the Climate Change Act 2008 sets the legislative basis for the UK’s action on climate change, and scrutiny of the UK Government’s policy progress towards Net Zero is undertaken by the independent Climate Change Committee (CCC), which produces annual progress reports. Several policy documents relevant to discussions around greenhouse gas emissions and land use have been produced, including the Net Zero Strategy (2021) and the Food Strategy Report (2022). These documents do not currently discuss large-scale adaptations in the food system to tackle emissions from agriculture or mention any action around reducing the amount of meat consumed per capita (Box 2). In 2022, however, the CCC stated that the amount of meat consumed must be reduced by 20–50% for the country to reach net zero by 2050.

3.3.2 Carbon sequestration

NATURE RECOVERY IS KEY TO ADDRESS THE CLIMATE CHANGE CRISIS

Stabilising our climate is dependent on reducing greenhouse gas emissions but also on removing carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon is continuously extracted from the atmosphere and stored by living organisms, and ecosystems such as undisturbed peatlands and forests are potential natural carbon sinks: nature recovery is thus key to address the climate change crisis (Pettorelli et al., 2021). The 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact recognized the critical role of protecting, conserving, and restoring nature. A hundred and forty-one countries containing >90% of global forests signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use and committed to working collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 (Nagrath et al., 2022), a target that has land use prioritisation consequences.

Nature-based solutions to the climate crisis are however not the only option considered by governments to improve land-based carbon sequestration capabilities (Harper et al., 2018, Roe et al., 2019). Globally, governments are increasingly exploring the use of large-scale carbon capture and storage facilities to meet the Paris Agreement targets (Dooley et al., 2022), with these being prominently featured in recent IPCC reports when exploring future mitigation scenarios to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas accumulation (see e.g., Rogelj et al., 2018).

This focus on technological solutions to increase carbon sequestration capabilities has also made its way into national strategies and action plans, including in the UK (Climate Change Committee, 2020b).

Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) approaches are of particular interest, involving the capture and permanent storing of CO2 from processes where biomass is converted into fuels or directly burned to generate energy (Booth & Wentworth, 2023). A reliance on BECCS could have vast implications for land use: in the UK, for example, the current Government’s net zero ambitions for the sequestration of 20-30Mt CO2/year by 2030 (UK Government, 2023) implies using an area of land between 0.34 to 1.3 times the size of Wales solely for BECCS, depending on assumptions (estimates generated by Paul Behrens using data from Smith et al., 2015).

3.4 ENERGY PRODUCTION AND SECURITY

Energy is foundational to the modern industrial economy, underpinning almost all human activities, from cooking to heating, lighting, storing, communicating, and moving. Energy security, here defined as the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price (Ang et al., 2015; POST, 2022), is a key priority for all nations. Direct land use for energy production currently accounts for approximately 2% of the global land area. However, demands for land to support energy transition in response to the climate change crisis are expected to significantly grow in the coming years (King et al., 2023), especially in the current context of increased

global political instability, accentuating the need for greater energy self-sufficiency.

In the UK, the recently adopted Energy Act 2023 contains provisions on energy production and security and articulates the Government’s plan to ensure that the country has a secure, reliable, and uninterrupted energy supply during the transition to net zero. The act includes several provisions relevant to land use prioritisation, including (i) support for carbon capture, utilisation and storage projects, and (ii) the creation of a new arms-length body, Great British Nuclear, to facilitate the design, construction, commissioning and operation of nuclear energy generation projects. However, the Act relies in large part on secondary legislation, which is yet to be introduced and passed, to articulate how the Act’s provisions will operate in practice. The Government has indicated that a fully decarbonised power system would be ‘composed predominantly of wind and solar’, aiming to achieve 70 gigawatt (GW) of solar power by 2035 (up from 15.7 GW at the end of 2023; UK Government, 2022). Such a target will require land use re-allocation, both to host solar farms, but also to improve grid capacity and connections (Rankl, 2024).

3.5 HOUSING AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Adequate housing was recognized as part of the right to an adequate standard of living in article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in article 11.1 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Investment in infrastructure, such as that linked to transport, telecommunications, security, waste management and water and energy supply, moreover underpins development, positively impacting output and productivity, labour market outcomes, human capital formation, and trade, while helping reduce poverty and inequality (Foster et al., 2023). As such, housing and infrastructure management are important priorities when thinking about land use.

In the UK, housing and infrastructure development are currently high on the political agenda. The recently published second national infrastructure assessment made several recommendations directly relevant to land use prioritisation, including the need to (i) build new infrastructure to enhance household and business resilience to climate change, including additional water supply infrastructure in preparation for a drier future, and (ii) improve connectivity by upgrading transport networks (National Infrastructure Commission, 2023). The UK Government is moreover committed to building 300,000 new houses each and every year (Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, 2018), and these developments should not add more nutrient pollution to water catchments (Box 3). The Government’s environmental improvement plan also includes a commitment that everyone should live within a 15-minute walk of a green or blue space (Defra, 2023a).

BOX 3: NUTRIENT NEUTRALITY

Phosphorus and nitrogen are two chemical elements essential for life, needed for micro-organisms, plants and animals to grow. These two elements can enter waterways as part of chemical compounds such as phosphates and nitrates: in the UK, the main sources of phosphorus and nitrogen in rivers and lakes are agricultural runoff and sewage effluent. High levels of nitrogen and phosphorus can be damaging to wildlife by promoting eutrophication and algal blooms in rivers and lakes. Where sites are already in unfavourable (poor) condition, extra wastewater from new housing developments can make matters worse. The regulation of nutrient neutrality in water bodies is a requirement across the UK. In England, public bodies, including local planning authorities, are required by the

Habitats Regulations to assess the environmental impact of plans and projects in areas designated as nutrient vulnerable zones, so that these developments do not add more phosphorus and nitrogen to the water catchment (Rankl, 2023). The primary method of meeting this nutrient neutrality principle is through land offsetting – taking agricultural land out of use to reduce nutrient pollution and using the ‘savings’ to permit new development. There are alternatives to land offsetting: these include creating or restoring semi-natural habitats in the same catchment area; creating a treatment wetland that is specifically designed to capture run-off from agricultural land or wastewater treatment works; upgrading existing treatment plants and septic tank units; and establishing new wastewater treatment works (Rankl, 2023).

Natural England, the Government’s

adviser for the natural environment in England, is currently leading on the development of net nutrient neutrality markets, where ‘nutrient credits’ can be sold to housing developers that fund mitigation activities in some river catchments. The credits are generated by landowners adopting measures to restore habitats or to capture runoff from agricultural land (Natural England, 2023).

4. KEY CONSIDERATIONS

Section 3 focused on identifying the key priorities that need to be delivered on when making decisions about land use, and provided examples of how these priorities are interconnected (Figure 3). In this section, we explore the key factors that need to be taken into account when translating these priorities into spatially explicit strategies.

4.1 ACCOUNTING FOR LAND QUALITY

Not all lands are suitable for delivering all benefits. Factors such as soil quality, topography and biotic conditions shape the return that can be expected from a given activity in a given location. For example, woodlands capture more carbon per hectare per year than heathlands and semi-natural grasslands (Gregg et al., 2021) and lowland floodplains tend to have higher potential agricultural output than upland regions. Returns can moreover change through time, with, for example, carbon sequestration

potential varying according to climate change exposure or time since restoration efforts were initiated (Seddon et al., 2020). In our globalised world (Carmenta et al., 2023), thinking about the international dimension of this consideration is important. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and recovering wildlife are both national and international targets, yet optimising land use to deliver on these objectives will lead to very different outcomes depending on whether this optimisation is carried out at the scale of a single country or globally (Reay, 2020).

4.2 ACCOUNTING FOR SPATIAL ARRANGEMENTS

The value of land is often shaped by the spatial arrangement of uses at the landscape scale. For example, the production of agricultural goods is highly dependent on the services provided by neighbouring natural ecosystems (Power, 2010). Connectivity between habitat patches is then key to wildlife recovery and ecosystem services delivery and maintenance, all underpinned by the flow of organisms, materials, energy, and information across landscapes (Correa Ayram et al., 2016). Connectivity can also be vital for energy security, especially in situations where energy is generated far from its residential and industrial users. Aggregation effects are particularly important for residential land use, with access to nature (and its associated positive effects on human health), for example, depending on residential land uses being effectively interwoven with green spaces.

4.3 ACCOUNTING FOR COSTS

Transforming land use on a national scale may require acquiring land to alter its use. Land cost is shaped by its potential as a source of services (‘land services’, for example, housing or agriculture) but also as an asset (where land is owned with the expectation of receiving a financial return). Increasing land prices can impact the ability of a country to meet its land use priorities, influencing housing affordability, food security and the development of low-carbon infrastructure (Jadevicius et al., 2018). Beyond the price of land itself, there are other costs associated with changing land use, with both construction and bureaucratic costs needing to be considered.

Another important point relates to opportunity costs, that is, the difference in expected value between a given land use and the alternative uses to which it could have been put. Expected values are dynamic as overall land use configurations change; some land use types may start to show sharp increases in their expected value as they become rarer – for example the only piece of green space in a dense urban environment, or the last habitat of a highly threatened species in a region. Opportunity costs from certain land use decisions can thus be large – if suboptimal land uses prevail at a national scale – while optimising land use for these trade-offs is a non-trivial problem given how expected values shift with the overall landscape configuration (see e.g., Adams et al., 2010).

4.4 JUST TRANSITION

Not all humans contribute equally to the climate and nature crises we face. When it comes to climate change, it has for example been estimated that the bottom 50% of the world population (in terms of wealth and income) emitted 12% of global emissions in 2019, whereas the top 10% emitted 48% of the total (Chancel, 2022). Since 1990, the bottom 50% of the world population is thought to have been responsible for only 16% of all emissions growth, whereas the top 1% has been responsible for 23% of the total; importantly, while per-capita emissions of the global top 1% increased since 1990, emissions from low- and middle-income groups within rich countries declined (Chancel, 2022). The process by which economic policies are chosen to address the global environmental crisis, and those policies themselves, thus have significant implications for democracy (see section 2.3.3).

Development imperatives and land use prioritisation are inextricable. Changes in land use to address the climate and nature emergency are expected to have consequences for everyone, including the most vulnerable in our societies who are also at heightened risk from dangerous climate impacts such as flooding, drought and overheating—particularly in rural areas. The most vulnerable are also far less likely to have insurance for such events (see e.g., ABI, 2013). Should significant portions of land be reallocated to different uses, the social and economic consequences of such shifts must be considered to ensure that no-one is left behind. This will require building a picture of what a just transition for land use looks like, by adopting a process where concerns from all corners of society can be heard and considered.

There are several UK Government and devolved Government commitments to achieve a ‘just transition’ to pre-empt or resolve such justice issues (Grub, 2023). These include legislative and non-legislative provisions such as the creation of the Just Transition Commission in Scotland. In June 2023, the Scottish Government launched a series of ‘discussion papers’ for consultation on a just transition for the construction, transport, and agriculture sectors (Scottish Government, 2023a,b,c). However, what exactly a ‘just transition’ means in the context of agriculture and other land use sectors and the means of delivering it are yet to be clarified (de Boon et al., 2023).

LAND USE PRIORITISATION: CHALLENGES

Translating priorities into spatially explicit strategies is associated with several challenges, which relate to the nature of some of the targets associated with these priorities, the resources and coordination needed for their implementation, as well as the imperatives of maintaining political and economic stability in a period of rapid transition. These challenges are discussed below.

5.1 NATURE AS A NON-FUNGIBLE DYNAMIC ASSET

Each ecological system contains a unique combination of biological information, in the forms of genes, species composition and species interactions; any given unit of nature can thus not be considered exchangeable with every other. Because of this, any land use prioritisation exercise cannot just consider the ‘quantity’ of nature conserved and its spatial arrangement, but also requires considering which ecosystems to conserve and why.

Nature is moreover not static, with ecosystems permanently adapting to changes in environmental conditions. Ecological responses to these changes operate on multiple temporal and spatial scales, and sometimes define long-term trajectories that may lead to abrupt shifts in ecosystem types. Extinction debts and ecosystem decay are an increasingly appreciated consequence of past human land uses, which can put ecosystems on a trajectory of collapse even in the absence of further human pressure (Blanchard & Munoz, 2023). Appropriately accounting for ecosystem trajectory, including the large associated uncertainties, is essential for effective land use prioritisation for nature amid rapidly changing environmental conditions.

5.2 ECONOMIC STABILITY

Land use strategies underpin national economic models and performance. Rapidly changing climatic conditions will impact outputs from the land as currently organised, which will have direct economic consequences; for example, reductions in agricultural production associated with increased frequencies of extreme climatic events can significantly increase food price and inflation. The Green Finance Institute recently estimated that the deterioration of the UK’s natural environment could lead to an estimated 12% loss to GDP (Green Finance Institute, 2024).

However, there remain significant uncertainties around (i) the speed, direction and strengths of expected changes in global and local climatic conditions, and (ii) the impacts of climate change on infrastructure and ecosystems (Chester et al., 2020; Pettorelli et al., 2021). Identifying what use is more likely to best suit what land, and delivering the changes required, while ensuring short-term and long-term economic stability, will be particularly challenging.

Carbon sequestration

Increase connectivity

LAND USE AND CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION

Renewable energy infrastructure Green infrastructure

Adaptive reshuffling

Figure 4: Land demands associated with climate change mitigation and adaptation. These include carbon sequestration, the building of renewable energy infrastructure, the development of green infrastructure (e.g., setting aside areas of nature for climate change adaptation), adaptive reshuffling (referring here to translocation of uses to new areas in response to climate change) and increasing connectivity (e.g., between natural habitats).

To mitigate the impacts of climate change on economies, transformative change in how land is used will be needed. For example, effective climate change mitigation and adaptation will require rapid, large-scale changes in land use, to (i) improve natural carbon sequestration capacity, (ii) make space for renewable energy infrastructures, (iii) improve ‘green infrastructure’; for example, by restoring forests and wetlands to reduce the impacts of flooding, (iv) shift certain land use from one place to another as some areas become unfit for certain purposes; for example, houses built in sites likely to be flooded on a semi-permanent basis in the future, or agricultural areas becoming less productive or unsuitable for certain crops, and (v) increase connectivity; for example, by increasing connectivity between natural habitats to increase the resilience of nature to climate change (Figure 4).

Land use also interacts directly with economic stability through the housing and food markets, which, in the UK, respectively make up roughly half of household wealth (Office for National Statistics, 2023) and more than 10% of household spending (Office for National Statistics, 2022). Thus, changes in the price and availability of land for residential construction and agricultural production cascade through the economy. It is particularly important in this context to highlight that the demand for house ownership, and thus allocation of land to residential construction, is determined only partly by the need for homes (or demand for housing services). It is also determined by investment in houses (demand for housing assets; Mulheim, 2019). An economic model which incentivises investment in houses (such as in the UK) results in more land used for residential construction (and thus unavailable for other uses); higher house prices (contributing to the housing crisis); lower economic growth; and the risk of macro-economic instability (see also section 2.3.2). Given the large share of UK net wealth invested in housing this probably is the largest feedback mechanism between land use and economic stability.

5.3 POLITICS AND NATIONAL SECURITY

Strategically prioritising land use requires long-term planning and commitments, yet democratic electoral cycles encourage short-termism. Political instability, often associated with economic instability, can further undermine long-term thinking. Engaging in discussions about land use strategy transition can be difficult for politicians, who sometimes prefer to focus discourse on rapidly achievable goals. This issue is compounded in countries where land ownership is highly concentrated, with lands primarily belonging to highly influential individuals and organisations. Such land ownership concentrations, particularly when compounded by a large share of wealth tied up in land as in the UK, generates strong vested interests and thus societal pressure to preserve existing land use patterns. This path dependence in land use, where the land use configuration of the past constrains options for the future, requires novel thinking to overcome. To address this issue, finding the right balance between short-term democratic control and long-term technocratic priority setting is key. In some situations, adherence to multilateral agreements (such as the Paris Agreement) can help, as governments must commit to long-term goals; however, such agreements lack enforcement mechanisms if there is a firm shift in the priorities of signatories.

Because land use decisions underpin our food system, the resilience of our economies and the health of our democracies, land use is fundamental to national security. In an increasingly uncertain climatic and geopolitical situation land use configurations must ensure they support essential sectors, and be flexible enough to respond dynamically to change. In Europe such considerations have in the past led to a focus on agricultural land use and food security (through the Common Agricultural Policy in particular; Candel et al., 2014). While this remains important the increasingly appreciated role of land in climate, nature, health, economic and political outcomes strongly suggests that a broader approach to the contribution of land to national security is warranted (see e.g., Campbell et al., 2022).

5.4 INSTITUTIONAL GAPS

5.4.1 Coordination of departmental strategies

The outcome of any land use prioritisation will directly impact the capacity of government departments to deliver on their targets, as land is, for example, required to build new houses; to ensure food and energy security; to develop new infrastructure and transport routes; to sequester carbon; and to recover nature. Moreover, land use decisions impact the delivery of multiple targets in different ways, given that any site holds multiple potential outcomes depending on its use. For example, converting an old woodland into a residential area will count positively towards a home-building target, but negatively impact targets around carbon sequestration, pollution, and access to green space.

In many countries, land has been managed as if it were an infinite resource, meaning that coordination between departments on land use has rarely been seen as an issue. However, as demands on land increase with climate change, there is a risk that different departments push for targets and policies that, when considered together, greatly exceed national land availability. A recent policy analysis by the Royal Society, for example, found that if

AS DEMANDS ON LAND INCREASE WITH CLIMATE CHANGE, THERE IS A RISK THAT DIFFERENT DEPARTMENTS PUSH FOR TARGETS AND POLICIES THAT, WHEN CONSIDERED TOGETHER, GREATLY EXCEED NATIONAL LAND AVAILABILITY

existing UK land-based policy commitments are added together, and agricultural production, diets and food waste remain static, up to 1.4 Mha of additional land (equivalent to the area of Northern Ireland) would be needed by 2030 to meet current policy targets for net zero and biodiversity (Royal Society, 2023).

5.4.2 Implementation of national strategies by local authorities

Central government strategies are implemented by local actors. In England, for example, the Government’s planning policies are set out in the National Planning Policy Framework but the development of all land and buildings are governed by the planning system, with most planning matters being the responsibility of local planning authorities. However, the planning system was not designed to deliver nature recovery, climate resilience and adaptation, as it focuses on development as opposed to use, creating challenges around the local delivery of various governmental targets relevant to land use planning.

Implementing any kind of national strategy requires resources to build or strengthen local capacity to deliver the strategy’s objectives. Without adequate funding and expertise, strategies are unlikely to deliver significant changes, a point well illustrated by the current issues plaguing the delivery of the Environment Improvement Plan in England. For example, a 2021 ALGE/ADEPT survey commissioned by Defra found that 26% of local planning authorities do not have any access to ecological expertise, with 95% of the respondents having no or very limited capacity to ensure most, if not all, applications that might affect biodiversity are assessed by an ecologist (Snell & Oxford, 2022). This recently led the Office for Environmental Protection to highlight resourcing issues as a key risk threatening the UK’s ability to deliver on its environmental commitments, including those in its Environmental Improvement Plan and associated, legally binding targets (Office for Environmental Protection, 2023).

KEY KNOWLEDGE GAPS FOR BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION

The impacts of and responses to the current climate and nature crises are poised to change nearly every facet of society in the coming decades. Effectively addressing these crises will require embracing an approach to land use prioritisation that simultaneously considers opportunities for feeding and housing a growing population, sequestering carbon to mitigate climate change, protecting and restoring biodiversity, and improving resilience in the face of extreme weather and global shocks such as pandemics and wars (Royal Society, 2023). Several knowledge gaps may however hinder the capacity to develop such an approach. This section discusses those gaps that may particularly impact biodiversity conservation outcomes.

6.1 MEASUREMENTS

6.1.1 Land use and land use change

Identifying national land use strategies that benefit nature requires being able to derive spatially robust conclusions about how different land uses, and changes to different uses, impact biodiversity both in the UK and overseas. To generate such conclusions, spatially and temporally explicit information on land use distribution is needed, something that is generally approximated, albeit very coarsely, using land cover data derived from satellite imagery. Such an approach can be problematic for a number of reasons: (i) both land conversion and changes in land use intensity impact biodiversity; largescale studies tend to only focus on land conversion, as land use intensity cannot generally be inferred from space; and (ii) large-scale mapping of land cover and detection of land cover change using satellite information is known to be associated with multiple issues and uncertainties, which can be related, among other things, to sensors’ spectral, spatial and temporal resolutions; sensors’ continuity; and land cover category choices (Pettorelli, 2019).

More broadly, there remains significant disjunctions between the issues, spatial scales and spatio-temporal resolutions targeted by different land use stakeholders (e.g., scientists, land users, policy makers), hindering effective science to policy pathways. The rise of land system science has been a direct response from the scientific community to address the lack of a platform for improving our understanding of the relationship between people and the land, but much remains to be done to advance this scientific field (see e.g., Turner et al., 2020).

Figure 5: The multiple dimensions of biodiversity. Biodiversity has multiple components (genes, population/species, and community/ ecosystems); each component possesses compositional (e.g., genetic diversity, abundance, land cover heterogeneity), structural (e.g., heterozygosity, population structure, level of fragmentation) and functional (e.g., rate of genetic drift, functional diversity, primary productivity), attributes (Noss, 1990).

6.1.2 Biodiversity

Biological diversity is a multifaceted entity famously difficult to measure (Pereira et al., 2013; Figure 5). Dimensions of biodiversity do not always correlate with one another, meaning that a given type of land use may positively impact some aspects of biodiversity while negatively impacting others. To date, most studies on land use impacts on biodiversity in the UK have focused on the diversity and distribution of particular groups, predominantly birds and certain groups of invertebrates. To advance our understanding of the short-term and long-term biodiversity benefits and disbenefits associated with certain land uses, a standardised framework for comprehensively comparing biodiversity benefits across land use types and intensities is required.

6.1.3 Interactions between drivers of biodiversity change

Global change drivers, such as land use and climate change, but also pollution and invasive species, interact in their effects on biodiversity; however, most studies consider the main effects of a single driver (Oliver & Morecroft, 2014). When interactions are considered, such as, for example, climate change-land use change interactions, research moreover tends to report the combined effect of all drivers on biodiversity, rather than focusing on identifying the underlying ecological mechanisms (Schulte to Bühne et al., 2021). Because of this, our ability to predict biodiversity outcomes of future land use strategies amid rapidly changing environmental conditions remains limited.

6.2 MULTI-USE VS SINGLE-USE

Adopting a multifunctional perspective when prioritising land use has been hailed as a key recommendation for designing future land use strategies (Foresight Land Use Futures Project, 2010; Royal Society, 2023). How and at what scale to measure multifunctionality in practice can yet be challenging (see e.g., Manning et al., 2018). Moreover, not all species can thrive in heavily modified landscapes, however nature-friendly these may be, meaning that not all lands can be managed to deliver on land use objectives that include both provisioning ecosystem services and biodiversity. In Europe, recent studies have suggested that approaches that include a mix of land management strategies (i.e., with some land managed with a singleuse focus (following the land sparing principle), and some managed with a multi-use perspective (following the land sharing ethos)) may deliver best for biodiversity (see e.g., Muys et al., 2022; Valente et al., 2022), although much remains to be explored as to how these approaches are best combined spatially (Finch et al., 2021).

6.3 INTER-DEPENDENCIES

It is now well established that the spatial configuration of habitats is an important factor shaping biodiversity, with, for example, the existence and arrangement of field boundaries, roadside verges and ditch banks in farmed landscapes playing a key role in wildlife population maintenance (see e.g., Marshall & Moonen, 2002; Samways et al. 2020). However, much remains to be learnt about how to optimise land use spatial configuration for biodiversity benefits at multiple scales (Opdam & Washer 2004; Redlich et al., 2022).

Similarly, there is early indication that land use intensity mediates the importance of habitat arrangement for biodiversity (Li et al., 2020), something that requires further exploration.

Terrestrial biodiversity does not exist in a silo and is profoundly tied to aquatic biodiversity (Box 4). However, land use decisions and prioritisation rarely acknowledge this dependency, and generally fail to integrate cross-realm connectivity in the selection of priority areas for conservation (Hermoso et al., 2021). Failing to adequately account for the importance of connectivity across realms could seriously hamper opportunities to secure nature recovery through changes in land use strategy (Dahlin et al., 2021). Some approaches have already been developed to understand and manage these dependencies, such as wholescapes thinking and the source-to-sea approach (see e.g., Maltby et al., 2019; Michels-Brito et al., 2023), which directly seek to address the linkages between land, water, estuary, coast, nearshore and ocean ecosystems in the management of natural resources and economic development.

6.4 LAND USE/LAND COVER CHANGE PROJECTIONS

Land use strategies are often underpinned by land use/land cover change projections, which has several challenges moving forward. First, they are by their nature uncertain, and they become increasingly uncertain as the targeted time window grows (Popp et al., 2017); sudden large-scale events such as extreme climatic events or wars are for example rarely considered (Jepsen et al., 2015). Second, the utility of land use/cover change projections for predicting the biodiversity outcomes of various land use strategies is

dependent on the land use/land cover classes used, as well as the spatial resolution considered. Distinguishing between the impacts of land conversion and those associated with changes in land use intensity would be particularly useful for improving model predictions; however, this distinction is not yet widely adopted by land use/cover change modellers (Dullinger et al., 2021). Third, projections currently fail to simultaneously integrate climate, ecological and economic models, limiting our ability to generate robust forecasts. Finally, there is little research on the uncertainties associated with the use of land use/cover change projections to predict biodiversity outcomes, and there is a need for studies that combine and contrast different storylines, land use/cover change models, and biodiversity modelling options (Albert et al., 2020).

BOX 4: MARINE USE PLANNING

Changes in how we use our seas need to be considered to address the climate and nature crises. The marine environment is expected to play a crucial role in supporting the delivery of several ambitious and wide-ranging targets, from supporting the energy transition; to helping deliver environmental protection and restoration goals, including 30x30; and supporting coastal communities as nations reorganise their economies. As discussed for landbased systems, these often-competing priorities are increasingly causing spatial challenges between sea users and the need to conserve and enhance our marine environment. In response to these challenges, the UK recently launched the Planning Offshore Wind Strategic Environmental Impact Decisions (POSEIDON) project to create a clear understanding of the environmental risks and opportunities for future offshore wind developments and provide spatially explicit information to support developers, advisors and decision-makers for current and imminent development rounds. The project, led by Natural England, will provide new baseline data to fill knowledge gaps and develop and update spatial models to guide offshore wind development.

7. RECOMMENDATIONS

Prioritising land use in the midst of multiple connected crises is a ‘wicked’ problem (ven den Ende et al., 2023): almost all options and decisions would have cascading consequences for other important considerations and have associated risks. The goals of the exercise are moreover themselves contested, both in terms of what goals we subjectively value, and the science which informs how we could achieve them. There is no doubt that clearer and more integrated decision-making processes are urgently needed.

The challenge is clear. Globally, the demand for the goods and services that land can provide – food, energy, fibre, carbon storage, nature and its services – significantly exceeds the ability of land to supply them sustainably, which is itself shrinking through climate change and wider land degradation (King et al., 2023). Nations across the

world, which are deeply embedded in networks of trade, can respond to this in multiple ways (Figure 6).

The targets embodied in the Paris Agreement and the SDGs offer the world a route to multilateral cooperation that brings land demand and sustainable supply into balance (through both supply-side and demand-side interventions). But this is not the only possible outcome. Another response is to predicate economic growth and national security above sustainability, and for governments to focus on continuing to maximise production and take extra measures to ensure security (such as through boosting domestic production, ‘on shoring’; or trading preferentially with allies, ‘ally shoring’; or projecting hard or soft power to ensure countries get what they want). Such an approach has two key impacts: (i) unsustainable production will lead to the environment hitting back; (ii) more climate change impacts, more biodiversity loss, more impacts from biodiversity loss, which will all ultimately make the world more disrupted – from supply chain disruptions to population displacement, unrest and conflicts. As more countries compete in a more constrained world, we all fall within a vicious circle that the more we try and ensure we have the goods we need for our economies, the more we contest, the less we cooperate internationally and the faster we retreat from a vision of a sustainable world. King and colleagues call this scenario ‘tipping over the edge together’ (King et al., 2023).

Figure 6: Non exhaustive list of possible targets shaping a country’s response to the current climate and nature emergency. Each target is framed as a gradient, and not all targets may be considered by a given country.

Whatever path we decide to take, one thing is certain: the way we relate to our land will change. Either because we change it or because the world changes around us. Science and innovation can provide the evidence and analytical tools needed to support decision-makers as they navigate difficult decisions. To ensure relevance, feasibility and uptake, evidence and solutions need to be generated and co-designed with those responsible for the lands (key message 1). The recommendations below highlight several key steps for ensuring that the research and environmental community are provided with the best opportunities to inform land management in times of rapid environmental, technological and geopolitical changes.

7.1 DECIDE WHAT WE, COLLECTIVELY, WANT OUR LAND FOR: NOW AND IN THE FUTURE

integrated, vision for what to do with the land, and (iii) from that, develop pathways for our national development to achieve the aims.

7.2 ADDRESS THE DEMAND SIDE, AS WELL AS THE SUPPLY SIDE

THE WAY WE RELATE TO OUR LAND WILL CHANGE. EITHER BECAUSE WE CHANGE IT OR BECAUSE THE WORLD CHANGES AROUND US

The land plays so many roles for us – from defining, in part, our cultural identity to improving our mental health and wellbeing through access to nature; from providing space for our homes to food for our tables; for its part in regulating air and water; and of course, for underpinning the livelihoods of many, as well as for its role in economic, energy and food security. As previously discussed, land is clearly associated with economic values (both in its costs, and in its production of goods and services), but it is much more associated with a wider range of values – values of us, as people, in the landscapes we grew up in, live in or visit. These values, economic and non-economic, change with time, and a key consideration is not just today’s needs, but those of the future. Looking ahead, it is plausible to imagine less reliance on global markets (Benton et al., 2023) and more reliance on local land for local needs; it is plausible to imagine quite different futures, including where we absolutely need the nature – and the services it provides – that some consider less important than economic growth. In addition, the world is becoming more volatile with climate change and biodiversity loss, and its impacts, driving an additional component of need from the land: resilience.

At the moment, we are lacking an overall strategic, citizen-centric, vision for what to do with our land, how to address national needs, including resilience and natural security, and how best to manage nature within the landscape. Our first recommendation, therefore, is to (i) implement a solid and transparent consultative process and build on initiatives such as the UK Food, Farming and Countryside Commission’s ‘national conversation’ about food and land, (ii) use this input, alongside international commitments and national approaches to nature, food, energy security, net zero and trade, to develop a systemic,

Our lands can be managed to offer multiple simultaneous benefits; whenever possible, these win-wins should be identified and prioritised (Royal Society, 2023; key message 2). In the UK, for example, a detailed analysis of which areas of farmland are best suited for carbon sequestration and nature recovery showed how most areas on the uplands, the downs and around the New Forest, as well as some parts of the Fens could accommodate both aims simultaneously; some of these areas are also those that produce the least food in the country (National Food Strategy, 2021). When it comes to nature conservation and housing development, nature-friendly measures (such as the installation of bat and bird boxes, bee bricks as well as green and brown roofs on flat spaces) should be considered and deployed in situations where their efficiency has been ascertained. Similarly, actions that compromise multiple land use objectives should be restricted: artificial grass is a good example of this, threatening biodiversity as well as climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Yet, negotiating the societal and economic transition needed to stabilise our climate and recover our wildlife is not just about optimising outputs on multiple dimensions from our lands; it is also about starting national conversations on demands and waste (key message 7): ultimately, as the economic demand for the goods from land can grow unchecked, but the ability to meet this demand sustainably cannot, there comes a point where land demands must become a target for planning. In the UK, the CCC’s 6th Carbon Budget starts to acknowledge this by suggesting changing diets (specifically, a reduction in the amount of meat consumed) to reduce pressure on land, allowing space for more land for energy production and carbon storage (Climate Change Committee, 2020b). Others have moreover highlighted that adding more plants to our diets has also many benefits for population health and pollution, in addition to reducing pressure on land and creating more space for biodiversity and ecosystem services (see e.g., IPCC, 2019; Willett et al., 2019). Importantly, there is evidence that such a shift could help buffer shocks to food systems resulting from conflict or extreme weather events (Sun et al., 2022b).

Beyond diet, there is also a clear role for food waste reduction. Greenhouse gas emissions associated with wasted food and drink in the UK was estimated to account for approximately 18Mt of CO2 equivalent in 2021–2022 (roughly 4% of the total emissions in 2022; Malik et al., 2024): significantly reducing food waste could thus potentially reduce emissions, but also decrease the amount of land required for food production, thereby freeing land for nature restoration as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation. Demand-side measures also include energy demands. In the UK, research has shown that a stronger focus on energy demand reduction in national mitigation plans could significantly enhance our ability to meet net zero emissions targets by 2050 without negatively impacting quality of life (Barrett et al., 2022); such a focus would also benefit wildlife while reducing pressures on new infrastructure development. For example, improved public transport increases its efficiency, lowers energy requirements, and reduces the land needed for

road expansion and energy production for future electric vehicles. Demand-side issues are a potentially important route to squaring the complex circle we are found in, but to date, such issues have been absent from political discourse in any meaningful sense. There is a need for a more nuanced conversation on land demands, amongst citizens and civil society, that engages politicians in a meaningful way (key message 4).

7.3 CONNECT LAND POLICY TO A WHOLE-GOVERNMENT PROGRAMME OF TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE

Long-term economic decline, low productivity, trade – both imports and exports – of goods from land, the housing crisis, poor public health from diets, fears of ecosystem collapse and associated loss of ecosystem services delivery, the risk of food system failure, and increasing climate instability – these challenges are connected and addressing them will involve transformational system-scale solutions that require addressing old orthodoxies about what policy options are possible.

Doing so will require concerted, rapid, and sustained dialogue and coordination by all stakeholders, from policymakers and investors to landowners and managers. In the UK, this calls for whole-government (including across Whitehall, the devolved administrations and local and regional government) approaches (key message 8) to land use management, underpinned by an integrated land use strategy that aligns simultaneously with the Paris Agreement, the Global Biodiversity Framework and the SDGs, and that promotes innovative solutions that deliver, at the same time, benefits for climate, nature, and people (Box 5).

A fundamental realigning of economic incentives that reflect the true value of nature in the economy may be the best and most lasting guarantee of a sustainable land use system (Dasgupta, 2021). The details of doing so effectively are beyond the scope of this report, but there is a growing body of precedent and research around the world on how this could be done, much of which relating to changes to fiscal policy (key message 5). For example, scholars have built the theoretical case in favour of a tax on the value of land to encourage development without subsidies and help reduce economic inequality, generating significant resources that could be used for urgently needed public sector investment and for addressing the growing challenge of sovereign indebtedness (Webb, 2013; Zenghelis et al., 2024). In the UK, it has been estimated that such a tax could raise economic output by as much 15%, while enabling democratic decision-making about the future of our land (Goodhart et al., 2021). However, details of how such a tax might be implemented matter, and the implementation could introduce significant uncertainty in comparison with already existing forms of land and property taxation (Hughes et al., 2020).

BOX 5: THE CLIMATE AND NATURE BILL

The Climate and Nature Private Members Bill is an example of cross-party legislative proposal to address the challenge of the intertwined nature and climate crises. The Bill, in its second reading in the 2023–2024 UK Parliament session, suggests a whole-of-government approach to tackle the root causes of the crises. Its three primary objectives are to commit the UK Government to (i) reducing its greenhouse gas emissions in line with the UK’s proportionate share of the remaining global carbon budget for 1.5°C; (ii) reversing the damage to

the natural world by 2030, and (iii) establishing a citizens’ assembly to recommend measures for inclusion in a whole-government strategy. The Bill’s key characteristics include (i) recognising that conservation approaches alone will not restore ecosystems to levels that will reverse the decline in biodiversity and help combat climate change without transformation of our economy, particularly the food system; (ii) addressing the current landscape of disjointed and often conflicting laws and policies, by calling for the whole of Government to coordinate their efforts to address the nature and climate emergency, through the definition and implementation

In many nations, such as England, competing land use needs are not systematically assessed by any overarching framework outside of the planning system, and no formal advisory or coordinating body outside of Government Departments exist. In response to this, a recent report by the House of Lords (2023) argued for the creation of a Land Use Commission to enable the development and promulgation of a land use framework to help landowners, managers and other decision-makers to make the most appropriate decisions for land. Such a commission could help move away from the current siloed approach to land use and promote a deliberative and cooperative approach where opportunities and synergies are actively sought. It could act as a ‘bridging institution’ mediating between different knowledge systems, actors, and institutions across scales to facilitate shared visions and a common understanding of land use issues, ultimately helping increase trust between these actors (Donkersley et al., 2021).

7.4 ADOPT A LAND SYSTEM PERSPECTIVE

The functioning of our lands, which provide vital socioeconomic resources to society (such as of food, fuel, fibres and many other ecosystem services that support production functions, regulate risks of natural hazards, or provide cultural and spiritual services), is governed by all the processes and activities related to the human use of land, including socioeconomic, technological and organizational investments and arrangements, as well as the benefits gained from land and the unintended social and ecological outcomes of societal activities (Verburg et al., 2013). Land is embedded in knowledge and belief systems, serves as an anchor for memories, identity, and heritage as well as a core source of livelihoods and economic profit: the meanings and values of land are dynamic over time, and influence the claims regarding

of a strategy; (iii) giving people a say in finding a fair way forward before a vote in Parliament through the creation of a citizens’ assembly; and (iv) offering businesses and individuals certainty about the way forward by adopting a legally binding strategy, thereby instilling confidence for investment in building supply chains, retraining, and modifying homes.

the use and expected benefits of land (Meyfroidt et al., 2020). For science and innovation to effectively support decision-making around land use change, a transdisciplinary approach that adopts a land system perspective and focuses on improving our understanding of the interplays between the social and ecological dimensions of these systems is thus required (key message 3).

Calls for higher levels of integration between the ecological and social science agenda on issues relating to land use and land cover are not new, and various examples of projects and initiatives adopting an interdisciplinary lens do exist (see e.g., Box 6). As a discipline, land system science may provide a platform for such an integration. However, most work to date fails to frame lands as systems and fully integrate their social and environmental dimensions. Studies focused on ecosystems and ecosystem services delivery, for example, tend to treat human activities (e.g., land use) as disturbances to ecosystem functioning, with minimal consideration of the interactions within the social subsystem (Roy Chowdhury & Turner, 2019). There are many reasons for this, which include a lack of general theory or systematic sets of theories of land uses (Turner et al., 2020) but also known challenges associated with advancing the understanding of transdisciplinary issues in a scientific and higher education community that remains primarily structured by discipline. These issues include (i) the paucity of a shared interdisciplinary space to facilitate dialogue and collaboration; (ii) semantic gaps and the lack of common reference frames; (iii) issues arising from mixed spatial scales; (iv) logistical difficulties associated with information transfer and management; and (v) difficulties associated with defining research objectives that are rewarding and scientifically valuable to all.

Universities, learned societies and research funding agencies are all important players in helping address these challenges.

Realistic models that can project the food, energy, infrastructure, greenhouse gas emissions, carbon sequestration potential and biodiversity outcomes of various land use strategies will be particularly important to guide integrated decision-making. Reliable forecasting and modelling are indeed critically important to the governance of complex systems, and for some parts of the economy, significant resources and political attention are devoted to it (see for example the recent review of Bank of England forecasting infrastructure; Bernanke, 2024). However, in

BOX 6: THE LAND USE FOR NET ZERO (LUNZ) HUB

The need for improved scientific coordination and dialogue around land use and land use change has been recognised by many countries, including the UK, who recently funded and launched the Land Use for Net Zero, nature and people (LUNZ) Hub. LUNZ aims to mobilise and support research to work in partnership with government and industry to tackle net zero through action in the UK land sectors. It convenes a transdisciplinary community of 34 organisations to support the UK government and devolved administrations in achieving

the case of land use this approach has so far been stymied by the challenge of integrating economic, ecological and climatic models. The creation of a forecasting infrastructure for land use could provide a platform for innovation and progress in the integration of models in these different realms, while guaranteeing long-term consistency and coherence in their development and use (key message 9).

Forecasting models will need to be parametrised with robust data. These data should be of diverse nature (including climatic, ecological, economic, social), interoperable and country-wide; they should be made accessible through the creation of a national environmental observatory (key message 10). Numerous datasets are generated through the implementation of various policies, research projects and business activities; however, these data are currently not brought together, reducing opportunities for their re-use by local and national stakeholders. Much could thus be gained by the establishment of a national information portal, which would enable existing data to be quality checked, curated and integrated, for all interested parties to access them. In the UK, there have been previous attempts at delivering such a platform (most notably, the UK Environmental Observation Framework) and establishing a national environmental observatory was a recommendation recently made both by the Office for Environmental Protection and the National Infrastructure Commission (Office for Environmental Protection, 2023; National Infrastructure Commission, 2023). A potential additional function of such an observatory could be to track de jure and de facto land use zoning in relation to set policy targets, which could help lessen the bureaucratic costs associated with land use transition by supporting effective re-zoning.

net zero while meeting other environmental and societal goals. Its focus is on soil health and carbon, reducing agricultural emissions, and land use change, including co-benefits, trade-offs and risks on wider environmental policies. The hub is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Government departments, namely Defra, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), as well as the Scottish Government, and it collaborates with the devolved administrations of Wales and Northern Ireland. The LUNZ Hub has created an Agile Policy Centre

that provides rapid evidence into policy-making processes on request, a Creative Methods Lab working with stakeholders and project partners on new ways of working across disciplines and sectors, and a Net Zero Futures Platform that is co-creating scenarios towards net zero and plausible pathways to achieve them. Further information can be found at www.lunzhub.com

CONCLUSIONS

Governments around the world are increasingly facing a ‘5-D’ challenge:

• The need for Decarbonisation for mitigation and sustainability transitions in general;

• The need to invest in Defence and wider national security alongside adaptation of key systems to build resilience;

• The need to ensure global Development: recognition that climate change is a collective problem, and that it is not possible to focus on domestic action and ignore the needs of lower income and more vulnerable countries because it will further destabilise the world and rebound on developed countries;

• Demographics and aging populations provide a challenge where there is a need for more social security yet with a lower proportion in the workforce;

• Debt: sovereign debt is at record levels across much of the world, so raising debt to invest in changing needs is difficult, yet the political space for raising taxes to invest and pay down the debt, whilst meeting the 4 Ds above, is very low.

Global climate costs, driving international tensions, are increasing the needs/urgency/costs associated with the first 3 Ds, and the last 2 Ds are constraining the economic options. Governments are thus on the horns of a dilemma: costs and their urgency are rising and the ability to meet these costs is simultaneously declining.

Land use is a critical piece in addressing these challenges; if we plan well, we can build a more productive, sustainable, health-providing, just, nature-protecting and resilient economy (Schlesier et al., 2024).

As demonstrated throughout this report, reorganising land use to secure a sustainable future for all will require embracing systems-level change that will confront key tenets of current economic

models, including path dependence, vested interests and a narrow focus on simple national accounting metrics (such as gross domestic product as an indicator of growth), which leave out most of the considerations discussed in this report. Economic transformation is difficult (Bootle & Vitali, 2024), requiring, among other things, a commitment to a clear strategy underpinned by a package of measures.

Even though nature recovery is critical to forging a path towards a sustainable future, there is a risk that other challenges may be prioritised. To ensure that wildlife recovery is given the attention it requires, the environmental community needs to engage with, help develop and push for whole-society approaches that redefine our entire relationship with nature, firmly integrating nature into environmental, but also economic and social policies (key message 6)

Changes will come at a cost, which will however be far lower than the costs associated with inaction. To fund the required transformations, including nature restoration, we need to go beyond voluntary actions and associated markets, and seriously engage with change in the economic framework to ensure that incentives align with the desired outcomes. This will need to include looking at taxation and public spending.

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