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Conservation opportunities on uncontested lands

Nature Sustainability volume 3, pages 9–15 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Competition for land resources is intense, with growing demand for food and resources to support humanity. Despite this, global agricultural area has significantly declined over the past two decades due to socio–political trends, market changes and environmental degradation. Although expensive, restoring degraded lands that are no longer contested for agricultural use due to low productivity may present a major conservation opportunity with minimal social or political opposition. Here we present a new perspective for conservation that highlights the potential conservation value of uncontested lands. We highlight key factors that make lands uncontested, define an approach for evaluating costs and benefits on uncontested land parcels and propose methods for identifying these lands.

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Fig. 1: Annual costs and benefits of acquiring and restoring land.
Fig. 2: Global changes in agricultural and pasture land.
Fig. 3: Classification of uncontested lands in the context of low- and high-productivity land.
Fig. 4: Potential cost patterns of four restoration project scenarios.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Australian Research Council—Discovery Project ‘Global extent of degraded farm lands and their conservation potential’ (ARC-DP170101480). E.M.M. was supported by an ARC Future Fellowship and Z.X. was supported by ARC-DP and the Natural Science Foundation of China (project no. 41801262). We thank S. Brisbane for providing final checks and edits on this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Geospatial Technology for the Middle and Lower Yellow River Regions, Ministry of Education, Henan University, Kaifeng, China

    Zunyi Xie

  2. Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Zunyi Xie & Eve McDonald-Madden

  3. Remote Sensing Research Centre, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Zunyi Xie & Stuart R. Phinn

  4. The Nature Conservancy, South Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Edward T. Game

  5. School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia

    Richard J. Hobbs

  6. School of Agriculture and Environment, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia

    David J. Pannell

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  1. Zunyi Xie
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Contributions

E.M.M. and E.T.G. conceived the initial idea, and all authors developed the concepts and structure of the Perspective. All authors contributed equally to further content development, writing and revisions of the manuscript on their specific expertise.

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Correspondence to Eve McDonald-Madden.

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Xie, Z., Game, E.T., Hobbs, R.J. et al. Conservation opportunities on uncontested lands. Nat Sustain 3, 9–15 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0433-9

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