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Significance Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) may be an effective way to reduce the negative impacts of agriculture at regional to global scales. Here, we present an approach that highlights the potential of VSS to reduce some of the negative externalities associated with agriculture production. To illustrate this potential, we show that VSS could reduce the global environmental impacts from growing sugarcane. Further, most of this environmental benefit comes from targeting just 10% of production area. To realize these environmental gains, incentives for VSS adoption need to be sufficient to cover the costs of criteria compliance. Determining these costs and public and private-sector mechanisms for efficiently transferring VSS-adoption subsidies to farmers and millers are key future research needs., Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) are stakeholder-derived principles with measurable and enforceable criteria to promote sustainable production outcomes. While institutional commitments to use VSS to meet sustainable procurement policies have grown rapidly over the past decade, we still have relatively little understanding of the (i) direct environmental benefits of large-scale VSS adoption; (ii) potential perverse indirect impacts of adoption; and (iii) implementation pathways. Here, we illustrate and address these knowledge gaps using an ecosystem service modeling and scenario analysis of Bonsucro, the leading VSS for sugarcane. We find that global compliance with the Bonsucro environmental standards would reduce current sugarcane production area (−24%), net tonnage (−11%), irrigation water use (−65%), nutrient loading (−34%), and greenhouse gas emissions from cultivation (−51%). Under a scenario of doubled global sugarcane production, Bonsucro adoption would further limit water use and greenhouse gas emissions by preventing sugarcane expansion into water-stressed and high-carbon stock ecosystems. This outcome was achieved via expansion largely on existing agricultural lands. However, displacement of other crops could drive detrimental impacts from indirect land use. We find that over half of the potential direct environmental benefits of Bonsucro standards under the doubling scenario could be achieved by targeting adoption in just 10% of global sugarcane production areas. However, designing policy that generates the most environmentally beneficial Bonsucro adoption pathway requires a better understanding of the economic and social costs of VSS adoption. Finally, we suggest research directions to advance sustainable consumption and production.

Sustainability agendas increasingly recognize that attaining conservation and development outcomes demands greater integration across sectors. Integrated landscape initiatives (ILIs) are a leading approach to reconciling multiple objectives. However, a characterization of the diversity of approaches under the ILI umbrella and the comparative performance of different types of approach is lacking. Here, we analyze questionnaire data obtained from project proponents to delimit four particular types of ILI: one type was dominated by agricultural interventions and another by conservation interventions, and these partially integrated ILIs engage local scales of governance; the remaining two types exhibit strong integration, with aims and actions across multiple sectors and scales of governance. We show that integrated projects were deemed to be more successful by project proponents. The typology offers the practitioner and research community an explicit set of strategies for selection, evaluation, and support and attests to the need for integration to achieve sustainable outcomes.

Biodiversity offset strategies are based on the explicit calculation of both losses and gains necessary to establish ecological equivalence between impact and offset areas. Given the importance of quantifying biodiversity values, various accounting methods and metrics are continuously being developed and tested for this purpose. Considering the wide array of alternatives, selecting an appropriate one for a specific project can be not only challenging, but also crucial; accounting methods can strongly influence the biodiversity outcomes of an offsetting strategy, and if not well-suited to the context and values being offset, a no net loss outcome might not be delivered. To date there has been no systematic review or comparative classification of the available biodiversity accounting alternatives that aim at facilitating metric selection, and no tools that guide decision-makers throughout such a complex process. We fill this gap by developing a set of analyses to support (i) identifying the spectrum of available alternatives, (ii) understanding the characteristics of each and, ultimately (iii) making the most sensible and sound decision about which one to implement. The metric menu, scoring matrix, and decision tree developed can be used by biodiversity offsetting practitioners to help select an existing metric, and thus achieve successful outcomes that advance the goal of no net loss of biodiversity.

Integrated landscape approaches offer a means of integrating policy and practice to ensure equitable and sustainable use of land while strengthening measures to improve environmental conservation, production, and well-being outcomes. While traditionally practiced and increasingly adopted in many parts of Asia, there is no systematic assessment to date of the characteristics, outcomes, and limitations of integrated landscape initiatives (ILIs) in the region. We provide a review of 166 ILIs in South and Southeast Asia to complement previous assessments in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. We surveyed ILIs from 16 countries to characterize initiative contexts, motivations and objectives, stakeholders and participants, investments and outcomes, and major successes and shortcomings. Results demonstrated that ILIs are used to address multiple challenges across the region. Ecosystem conservation is the strongest driver behind ILI development and design, however, initiatives invested heavily across four identified domains: agriculture, conservation, livelihoods, and institutional coordination and planning. Investment in capacity building activities to improve agricultural practices, natural resource management and community participation, was strong. We found clear divisions in how stakeholders participate in ILIs: donors are more than twice as likely to design rather than implement ILIs, while other groups, such as women's associations, were frequently limited to implementation. Engagement of the private sector is comparatively low. Other challenges identified include concerns about the long-term sustainability of ILIs, lack of government and financial support, and agendas sidelined by powerful stakeholders. While integrated approaches are necessary to address landscape multifunctionality, many initiatives struggled to transition from planning to implementation.

Agriculture sustainability standards and certification are increasingly used by the private sector and civil society to incentivize and support environmental conservation and improved rural. However, evidence of impact is limited by methodological challenges that hamper the quantification of certification-induced changes, especially beyond farm level. This paper aims to explore the changes to soil and nutrient regulation ecosystem services from the adoption of Rainforest Alliance tea certification in the Kenyan Upper Tana River watershed. In this study we: i) apply ecosystem service models to simulate the effect of farm-level practices for before and after-certification scenarios, and; ii) evaluate the model applications for their ability to guide future decision making. Our scenario results indicate that a widespread adoption of agricultural practices prescribed in the certification standard reduces sediment export into watercourses. However, an increase in fertilizer use by certified farmers is estimated to result in greater nitrogen and phosphorous loads. Our scenario analyses are highly sensitive to input data and model choice, but show similar relative impacts of tea certification. Opportunities to improve spatial impact measurements to support decision making can be found in the systematic accounting of land management practices by certification organizations and increased remote sensing image accessibility.

Zero-deforestation commitments are a type of voluntary sustainability initiative that companies adopt to signal their intention to reduce or eliminate deforestation associated with commodities that they produce, trade, and/or sell. Because each company defines its own zero-deforestation commitment goals and implementation mechanisms, commitment content varies widely. This creates challenges for the assessment of commitment implementation or effectiveness. Here, we develop criteria to assess the potential effectiveness of zero-deforestation commitments at reducing deforestation within a company supply chain, regionally, and globally. We apply these criteria to evaluate 52 zero-deforestation commitments made by companies identified by Forest 500 as having high deforestation risk. While our assessment indicates that existing commitments converge with several criteria for effectiveness, they fall short in a few key ways. First, they cover just a small share of the global market for deforestation-risk commodities, which means that their global impact is likely to be small. Second, biome-wide implementation is only achieved in the Brazilian Amazon. Outside this region, implementation occurs mainly through certification programs, which are not adopted by all producers and lack third-party near-real time deforestation monitoring. Additionally, around half of all commitments include zero-net deforestation targets and future implementation deadlines, both of which are design elements that may reduce effectiveness. Zero-net targets allow promises of future reforestation to compensate for current forest loss, while future implementation deadlines allow for preemptive clearing. To increase the likelihood that commitments will lead to reduced deforestation across all scales, more companies should adopt zero-gross deforestation targets with immediate implementation deadlines and clear sanction-based implementation mechanisms in biomes with high risk of forest to commodity conversion., Global Environmental Change, 54, ISSN:0959-3780, ISSN:1872-9495

Voluntary sustainability standards have increased in uptake over the last decade, here we explore their potential contribution to biodiversity conservation and other aspects of agricultural sustainability. We reviewed the content of twelve major crop standards and quantified their global coverage. All standards included some provisions for the protection of biodiversity, but we only identified two with criteria that prohibited all deforestation. We found records of certified cropland in 133 countries, and estimated that certified crop area increased by 11% (range 8.8% -13.5%) per year from 2000 to 2012, but still only covered 1.1% (range 1.0%-1.2%) of global cropland. The crops with the highest levels of certification were heavily-traded commodities: coffee, cocoa, tea and palm oil each had 10% or more of their total global production area certified. Coverage was lower for other crops, including the world's most important staple foods (maize, rice, wheat). Sustainability standards have considerable potential to contribute to conservation, but there is an ongoing need for better evaluation of how effectively they are implemented. We present examples of ways in which governments, companies, financial institutions and civil society can work together to scale up and target certification to places where it can have the greatest positive impact. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

The tourism industry can negatively affect wildlife, plants and natural ecosystems through habitat destruction, pollution, over-exploitation of natural resources and visitor impacts to sensitive ecosystems. One approach to mitigate such threats is the application of voluntary sustainability standards, supported by training of tourism enterprises and verified by external audits. The Rainforest Alliance standard defines 78 criteria (requirements) for sustainable environmental, social and business practices, and has been adopted by over 600 tourism enterprises – including hotels, lodges and tour boats – in 12 countries. We examined the performance of 106 hotels in six Latin American countries against 29 of the sustainable tourism criteria most directly related to biodiversity conservation. Independent audits were used to assess hotel performance at baseline followed by a repeat assessment after training, about two years later. Mean conformance with the 29 biodiversity criteria increased significantly...

Agroecological intensification (AEI) integrates ecological principles and biodiversity management into farming systems with the aims of increasing farm productivity, reducing dependency on external inputs, and sustaining or enhancing ecosystem services. This review develops an analytic framework to characterize the fulfilment of these objectives by documenting the co-occurrence of positive, neutral, and negative outcomes for crop yield and nine regulating ecosystem services. We provide an illustrative examination of the framework, evaluating evidence for yield and ecosystem service outcomes across five AEI systems: conservation agriculture, holistic grazing management, organic agriculture, precision agriculture, and system of rice intensification (SRI). We reviewed 104 studies containing 245 individual comparisons between AEI and contrasting farming systems. In three of the five AEI systems, conservation agriculture, precision agriculture, and SRI, more than half of reviewed comparisons reported ‘win-win’...

A number of governance mechanisms address socio-environmental challenges associated with commodity agriculture in tropical forested countries. Governance mechanisms that prove effective in one agricultural sector are often applied to other sectors as well. For example, voluntary certification programs have been adopted by producers of commodities as diverse as beef, coffee, palm oil, and soy. However, there are substantial differences in the extent to which governance mechanisms scale up and achieve impact in different sectors. This paper analyzes how the potential for scaling up a particular governance mechanism is influenced by environmental, market, and social geographies that differ between sectors. Through stakeholder interviews, farm-level surveys, and a literature review, we examine two types of voluntary governance mechanisms (third-party certification, and sustainable intensification programs) in the coffee and cattle sectors in Brazil, to understand why the two governance mechanisms have scaled differently between these two sectors. We find that third-party certification programs have scaled up relatively well in Brazil's coffee sector, more so than its cattle sector, in part owing to differences in sustainability priorities, market orientations, supply chain traceability, and social networks between the two sectors. We also find that pilot sustainable intensification programs in the cattle sector have had more success than certification in engaging farmers, in part because they involve less investment from participating farmers. We conclude that the distribution and quality of environmental resources, markets, knowledge, actors, and networks can play an important role in the ability of a governance mechanism to effectively take root.

Around the world, agricultural landscapes are increasingly seen as “multi-functional” spaces, expected to deliver food supplies while improving rural livelihoods and protecting and restoring healthy ecosystems. To support this array of functions and benefits, governments and civil society in many regions are now promoting integrated farm- and landscape-scale management strategies, in lieu of fragmented management strategies. While rural producers are fundamental to achieving multi-functional landscapes, they are frequently viewed as targets of, or barriers to, landscape-oriented initiatives, rather than as leading agents of change. In reality, however, rural producers in many areas have embraced elements of multi-functional land management. In this paper, we explore the role and recent evolution of producer movements in influencing multi-functional farm and landscape management. We explore these roles through six case studies, including a land reform movement in Brazil, indigenous territorial development in Bolivia, conservation agriculture associations in Canada, environmental cooperatives in the Netherlands, indigenous and biocultural heritage associations in Peru, and Landcare groups in the Philippines. These experiences suggest that producer movements are playing pivotal roles in supporting landscape multi-functionality, not only through agroecological farming practices but also through off-farm efforts to conserve ecosystems and support multi-stakeholder landscape planning. On the other hand, interests of producer movements are not always fully aligned with multi-functional landscape management approaches. The contribution of producer movements to multi-functional landscapes depends on these movements including farm and landscape stewardship in their values and goals, and having the political support and capacity to engage meaningfully in multi-stakeholder processes.

Sustainability standards and certification serve to differentiate and provide market recognition to goods produced in accordance with social and environmental good practices, typically including practices to protect biodiversity. Such standards have seen rapid growth, including in tropical agricultural commodities such as cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soybeans, and tea. Given the role of sustainability standards in influencing land use in hotspots of biodiversity, deforestation, and agricultural intensification, much could be gained from efforts to evaluate and increase the conservation payoff of these schemes. To this end, we devised a systematic approach for monitoring and evaluating the conservation impacts of agricultural sustainability standards and for using the resulting evidence to improve the effectiveness of such standards over time. The approach is oriented around a set of hypotheses and corresponding research questions about how sustainability standards are predicted to deliver conservation benefits. These questions are addressed through data from multiple sources, including basic common information from certification audits; field monitoring of environmental outcomes at a sample of certified sites; and rigorous impact assessment research based on experimental or quasi-experimental methods. Integration of these sources can generate time-series data that are comparable across sites and regions and provide detailed portraits of the effects of sustainability standards. To implement this approach, we propose new collaborations between the conservation research community and the sustainability standards community to develop common indicators and monitoring protocols, foster data sharing and synthesis, and link research and practice more effectively. As the role of sustainability standards in tropical land-use governance continues to evolve, robust evidence on the factors contributing to effectiveness can help to ensure that such standards are designed and implemented to maximize benefits for biodiversity conservation.

Approaches to integrated landscape management are currently garnering new interest as scientists, policymakers, and local stakeholders recognize the need to increase the multi-functionality of agricultural landscapes for food production, livelihood improvement, and ecosystem conservation. Such approaches have been attempted in many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) but to date there has been no systematic assessment of their characteristics, outcomes, and limitations. To fill this gap, we surveyed participants and managers in integrated landscape initiatives throughout the LAC region to characterize these initiatives’ contexts, motivations and objectives, stakeholders and participants, activities and investments, outcomes, and major successes and shortcomings. Results from 104 initiatives in 21 countries indicate that integrated landscape management is being applied across the region to address a variety of challenges in diverse contexts, and that use of this approach is expanding. Initiatives reported investing across four key “domains” of landscape multi-functionality: agricultural production, ecosystem conservation, human livelihoods, and institutional planning and coordination. Initiatives reported positive outcomes across all four domains, but particularly with respect to institutional planning and coordination. Initiatives with larger numbers of objectives, investments, and participating stakeholder groups all reported significantly higher numbers of positive outcomes, suggesting significant value in the core precepts of the integrated landscape management approach. Key challenges identified by survey respondents—including the long time horizon required to achieve results at scale, unsupportive policy frameworks, and difficulty in engaging the private sector and other important stakeholders—offer insights for improving the future effectiveness of integrated landscape initiatives.

Voluntary sustainability standards and certification offer a promising mechanism to mitigate the severe negative impacts of agricultural expansion and intensification on tropical biodiversity. From a conservation standpoint, certification of tropical agroforestry crops, especially coffee and cocoa, is of particular interest given the potentially high biodiversity value of agroforestry systems and the substantial market penetration of coffee and cocoa certification in recent years. Here, we review experience with coffee and cocoa certification, summarize evidence on conservation impacts, and explore future needs. While there is much evidence that environmental criteria behind certification support biodiversity conservation, it is less clear to what extent certification is the cause of improved conservation outcomes. Additionally, the farm-scale focus of current certification models may limit delivery of biodiversity conservation benefits, as maintenance of biodiversity depends on processes at larger landscape scales. To address this scale mismatch, we suggest that investment and innovation in certification over the next decade prioritize landscape conservation outcomes. This may be achieved by (1) linking existing certification mechanisms with broader landscape and ecosystem service management approaches and/or (2) expanding current certification models to consider the landscape itself as the certified unit.

Summary Recent years have witnessed increased investment in African rural landscapes for agriculture and food security, poverty alleviation, climate change adaptation, and ecosystem conservation. While such investments historically tended to be made independently under sectoral programs, a new wave of integrated landscape initiatives (ILIs) is promoting integrated, multi-objective management of rural landscapes. We surveyed leaders and managers of 87 ILIs in 33 African countries to provide the first region-wide portrait of contexts, motivations, design, participation, and outcomes of such initiatives. Results suggest that ILIs are promoting “multi-functionality” of rural regions, while aiding stakeholders in mediating tradeoffs and synergies among multiple outcomes.

Environmental challenges are complex and require expertise from multiple disciplines. Consequently, there is growing interest in interdisciplinary environmental research that integrates natural and social science, an often arduous undertaking. We surveyed researchers interested and experi- enced in research at the human-environment interface to assess perspectives on interdisciplinary research. Integrative interdisciplinary research has eluded many of our respondents, whose efforts are better described as additive multidisciplinary research. The respondents identified many advantages and rewards of interdisciplinary research, including the creation of more-relevant knowledge. However, they also reported significant challenges and obstacles, including tension with departments (49%) or institutions (61%), communication difficulties, and differing disciplinary approaches, as well as institutional barriers (e.g., a lack of credit in promotion and tenure). Most (52%) believed that developing interdisciplinary breadth should begin as early as the undergraduate level. We apply our results to recommendations for successful interdisciplinary endeavors.

Conservation development projects combine real-estate development with conservation of land and other natural resources. Thousands of such projects have been conducted in the United States and other countries through the involvement of private developers, landowners, land trusts, and government agencies. Previous research has demonstrated the potential value of conservation development for conserving species, ecological functions, and other resource values on private lands, especially when traditional sources of conservation funding are not available. Nevertheless, the aggregate extent and effects of conservation developmentwerepreviouslyunknown.Toaddressthisgap,weestimatedtheextentandtrendsofconservation development in the United States and characterized its key attributes to understand its aggregate contribution to land-conservation and growth-management objectives. We interviewed representatives from land trusts, planning agencies, and development companies, searched the Internet for conservation development projects and programs, and compiled existing databases of conservation development projects. We collected data on 3884 projects encompassing 1.38 million ha. About 43% of the projects targeted the conservation of specific plant or animal species or ecological communities of conservation concern; 84% targeted the protection of native ecosystems representative of the project area; and 42% provided buffers to existing protected areas. The percentage of protected land in conservation development projects ranged from 99%, and the effects of these projects on natural resources differed widely. We estimate that conservation development projects have protected roughly 4 million ha of land in the United States and account for about 25% of private-land conservation activity nationwide.

Mesoamerica provides a unique context for biodiversity conservation in managed landscapes because of its geography, history of human intervention, and present conservation and development initiatives. The long and narrow form of the Mesoamerican landmass, and its division by a central mountain range, has served as both a bridge and a barrier. Conservation efforts in Mesoamerica are unique for the emphasis they place on regional connectivity through the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor and on biodiversity conservation in managed landscapes. The emphasis on conservation in agricultural systems has fostered innovations in payment for ecosystem services, and provides novel insights on the functional role that biodiversity plays in the provisioning of ecosystem services. The increasing rate of economic development in the region and the advent of new payment for ecosystem service schemes have provided new opportunities for forest regeneration and restoration. However, the small scale of private landholdings and the diversity of land uses featured in the region, while contributing to biodiversity conservation due to their structural and floristic complexity, present challenges for biodiversity monitoring and management.

Global development of the biofuel sector is proceeding rapidly, driven by national policy mandates, government subsidies, and profit opportunities for farmers, agribusiness and energy companies. To date, most investment in—and dialogue on—biofuels has focused on large-scale production of liquid transport fuels. A smaller set of efforts has explored the potential of biofuels to promote rural development by reducing energy poverty among the world's two billion poorest people. Here, we consider the potential of these diverse approaches to promote the goals of ecoagriculture: namely, sustainable agricultural production (including biofuel feedstocks), conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services and viable rural livelihoods. Using a landscape planning framework, we review empirical evidence and identify criteria for designing biofuel production systems that promote this trio of goals. Biofuel development has the greatest potential when biomass production is an ‘interstitial’ activity and when processing...

Suburban, exurban, and rural development in the United States consumes nearly 1 million hectares of land per year and is a leading threat to biodiversity. In response to this threat, conservation development has been advanced as a way to combine land development and land conservation while providing functional protection for natural resources. Yet, although conservation development techniques have been in use for decades, there have been few critical evaluations of their conservation effectiveness. We addressed this deficiency by assessing the conservation outcomes of one type of conservation development project: conservation and limited development projects (CLDPs). Conducted by land trusts, landowners, and developers, CLDPs use revenue from limited development to finance the protection of land and natural resources. We compared a sample of 10 CLDPs from the eastern United States with their respective baseline scenarios (conventional development) and with a sample of conservation subdivisions—a different conservation development technique characterized by higher-density development. To measure conservation success, we created an evaluation method containing eight indicators that quantify project impacts to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems at the site and in the surrounding landscape. The CLDPs protected and managed threatened natural resources including rare species and ecological communities. In terms of conservation benefits, the CLDPs significantly outperformed their respective baseline scenarios and the conservation subdivisions. These results imply that CLDPs can offer a low-impact alternative to conventional development and a low-cost method for protecting land when conventional conservation techniques are too expensive. In addition, our evaluation method demonstrates how planners and developers can incorporate appropriate ecological considerations when designing, reviewing, and evaluating conservation development projects. Resumen: El desarrollo suburbano, exurbano y rural en los Estados Unidos consume casi un millon de hectareas por ano y es la mayor amenaza para la biodiversidad. En respuesta a esta amenaza, el desarrollo con conservacion ha sido propuesto como una forma de combinar el desarrollo de tierras con la conservacion de tierras al mismo tiempo que se proporciona proteccion funcional a los recursos naturales. Sin embargo, aunque las tecnicas de desarrollo con conservacion han estado en uso por decadas, ha habido pocas evaluaciones criticas de su efectividad para la conservacion. Abordamos esta deficiencia mediante la evaluacion de los resultados de conservacion de un tipo de proyecto de desarrollo con conservacion: proyectos de desarrollo limitado y conservacion (PDLC). Los PDLC, llevados a cabo por fundaciones, propietarios e inmobiliarias, utilizan ingresos del desarrollo limitado para financiar la proteccion de suelos y recursos naturales. Comparamos una muestra de 10 PDLC en el este de Estados Unidos con sus escenarios de base (desarrollo convencional) y con una muestra de subdivisiones de conservacion – una tecnica de desarrollo con conservacion caracterizada por un desarrollo de mayor densidad. Para medir el exito de conservacion, creamos un metodo de evaluacion con 8 indicadores que cuantifican los impactos del proyecto a los ecosistemas terrestres y acuaticos del sitio y en el paisaje circundante. Los PDLC protegieron y manejaron recursos naturales amenazados, incluyendo especies y comunidades ecologicas raras. En terminos de beneficios para la conservacion, los PDLC fueron significativamente mejores que sus escenarios de base y que las subdivisiones de conservacion. Estos resultados implican que los PDLC pueden ofrecer alternativas de bajo impacto al desarrollo convencional y un metodo de bajo costo para la proteccion de tierras cuando las tecnicas de conservacion convencionales son demasiado caras. Adicionalmente, nuestro metodo de evaluacion demuestra como los planificadores y las inmobiliarias pueden incorporar consideraciones ecologicas apropiadas en el diseno, la revision y evaluacion de proyectos de desarrollo con conservacion.

Suburban, exurban, and rural development is a leading cause of biodiversity loss and natural resource degradation in the United States. In response to this threat, conservation development has been advanced as a way to combine land development with functional protection for conservation resources. This article provides a review, analysis, and ecological critique of the four principal types of conservation development: (1) conservation buyer projects, (2) conservation and limited development projects, (3) conservation subdivisions, and (4) conservation-oriented planned development projects. Each approach can contribute to landscape-scale conservation, with benefits that include reducing the off-site impacts of development, buffering and connecting protected areas, and conserving imperiled species and ecosystems. However, the benefits of these approaches depend significantly on project density, design, and context. Accordingly, this article offers a framework for differentiating and analyzing these...

Sustainability standards and certification serve to differentiate and provide market recognition to goods produced in accordance with social and environmental good practices, typically including practices to protect biodiversity. Such standards have seen rapid growth, including in tropical agricultural commodities such as cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soybeans, and tea. Given the role of sustainability standards in influencing land use in hotspots of biodiversity, deforestation, and agricultural intensification, much could be gained from efforts to evaluate and increase the conservation payoff of these schemes. To this end, we devised a systematic approach for monitoring and evaluating the conservation impacts of agricultural sustainability standards and for using the resulting evidence to improve the effectiveness of such standards over time. The approach is oriented around a set of hypotheses and corresponding research questions about how sustainability standards are predicted to deliver conservation benefits. These questions are addressed through data from multiple sources, including basic common information from certification audits; field monitoring of environmental outcomes at a sample of certified sites; and rigorous impact assessment research based on experimental or quasi-experimental methods. Integration of these sources can generate time-series data that are comparable across sites and regions and provide detailed portraits of the effects of sustainability standards. To implement this approach, we propose new collaborations between the conservation research community and the sustainability standards community to develop common indicators and monitoring protocols, foster data sharing and synthesis, and link research and practice more effectively. As the role of sustainability standards in tropical land-use governance continues to evolve, robust evidence on the factors contributing to effectiveness can help to ensure that such standards are designed and implemented to maximize benefits for biodiversity conservation.

Ecoagriculture is an approach to managing landscapes for the simultaneous and synergistic achievement of three sets of outcomes: maintaining, increasing, or improving agricultural production; promoting biodiversity and ecosystem services; and enhancing human livelihoods and well-being. These elements are stitched together by institutions that support multistakeholder collaboration to achieve these outcomes. Key elements of the approach include: agreed landscape objectives; identification of synergies and trade-offs; land use practices that contribute to multiple objectives; markets, policies, and programs that encourage synergies and reduce trade-offs; and institutions that enable collaborative planning, implementation, and monitoring among stakeholders.

Historically, agricultural systems have been managed to maximize production of food and fiber; however, agricultural landscapes can provide numerous goods and services to society. These include ecosystem services, described as those functions of ecosystems that are useful to humans or support human well-being. Agroecology is the application of ecological concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agricultural systems. It includes critical ecosystem services and the organisms, guilds, and ecological communities that provide them. This article explores approaches to measuring, managing, and governing agricultural landscapes and ecosystem services with a focus on agroecology and related methods.

The development of effective agricultural monitoring networks is essential to track, anticipate and manage changes in the social, economic and environmental aspects of agriculture. We welcome the perspective of Lindenmayer and Likens (J. Environ. Monit., 2011, 13, 1559) as published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring on our earlier paper, "Monitoring the World's Agriculture" (Sachs et al., Nature, 2010, 466, 558-560). In this response, we address their three main critiques labeled as 'the passive approach', 'the problem with uniform metrics' and 'the problem with composite metrics'. We expand on specific research questions at the core of the network design, on the distinction between key universal and site-specific metrics to detect change over time and across scales, and on the need for composite metrics in decision-making. We believe that simultaneously measuring indicators of the three pillars of sustainability (environmentally sound, social responsible and economically viable) in an effectively integrated monitoring system will ultimately allow scientists and land managers alike to find solutions to the most pressing problems facing global food security.

On our current trajectory, severe disruptions to national and regional food systems are highly likely to happen - the main question is when. This report, commissioned by the UN DESA as a strategic input to SD21 and the Rio discussions, focuses on vital areas and offers a collection of up to date information on the current and likely trends for our global Food and Agriculture systems.With contributions from more than 70 global agri-food leaders in the business, policy, green, and social arenas, the report exposes unforeseen areas of consensus. By opening the silos of partisan thinking to invite reasoned discussion, it also exposes areas of disagreement and lays out a key set of specific "high impact" areas where smart decisions will make the most difference for sustainable and resilient food and agriculture systems.

The Rio Copan watershed in western Honduras is not unlike many agricultural landscapes throughout the developing world. A journey through this 800 km2 watershed reveals a mixture of small and mid-sized farms producing cattle, coffee, and subsistence crops. Residents here face many challenges: recent population growth has led to deforestation and water pollution, while agricultural productivity is generally low and poverty levels remain high, especially among the indigenous Mayan population.

Conservation development projects combine real-estate development with conservation of land and other natural resources. Thousands of such projects have been conducted in the United States and other countries through the involvement of private developers, landowners, land trusts, and government agencies. Previous research has demonstrated the potential value of conservation development for conserving species, ecological functions, and other resource values on private lands, especially when traditional sources of conservation funding are not available. Nevertheless, the aggregate extent and effects of conservation development were previously unknown. To address this gap, we estimated the extent and trends of conservation development in the United States and characterized its key attributes to understand its aggregate contribution to land-conservation and growth-management objectives. We interviewed representatives from land trusts, planning agencies, and development companies, searched the Internet for conservation development projects and programs, and compiled existing databases of conservation development projects. We collected data on 3884 projects encompassing 1.38 million ha. About 43% of the projects targeted the conservation of specific plant or animal species or ecological communities of conservation concern; 84% targeted the protection of native ecosystems representative of the project area; and 42% provided buffers to existing protected areas. The percentage of protected land in conservation development projects ranged from40% to99%, and the effects of these projects on natural resources differed widely. We estimate that conservation development projects have protected roughly 4 million ha of land in the United States and account for about 25% of private-land conservation activity nationwide.

To feed the world without further damaging the planet, Jeffrey Sachs and 24 food-system experts call for a global data collection and dissemination network to track the myriad impacts of different farming practices.

"Payment for ecosystem services (PES) is a market-based approach to environmental management that compensates land stewards for ecosystem conservation and restoration. Because low-income households and communities control much of the ecologically sensitive land in developing countries, they potentially stand to gain from PES, as environmentally responsible stewardship is assigned a value by various actors in society. To date, however, instances of PES benefiting the poor have been limited mainly to specific localities, small-scale projects, and a handful of broader government programs. We analyze the size, characteristics, and trends of PES to evaluate its future potential to benefit low-income land stewards in developing countries. We estimate that by the year 2030, markets for biodiversity conservation could benefit 10???15 million low-income households in developing countries, carbon markets could benefit 25???50 million, markets for watershed protection could benefit 80???100 million, and markets for landscape beauty and recreation could benefit 5???8 million. If payments and markets reach these potentials, they could provide a non-negligible contribution to poverty alleviation at the global level."

Suburban, exurban, and rural development in the United States consumes nearly 1 million hectares of land per year and is a leading threat to biodiversity. In response to this threat, conservation development has been advanced as a way to combine land development and land conservation while providing functional protection for natural resources. Yet, although conservation development techniques have been in use for decades, there have been few critical evaluations of their conservation effectiveness. We addressed this deficiency by assessing the conservation outcomes of one type of conservation development project: conservation and limited development projects (CLDPs). Conducted by land trusts, landowners, and developers, CLDPs use revenue from limited development to finance the protection of land and natural resources. We compared a sample of 10 CLDPs from the eastern United States with their respective baseline scenarios (conventional development) and with a sample of conservation subdivisions--a different conservation development technique characterized by higher-density development. To measure conservation success, we created an evaluation method containing eight indicators that quantify project impacts to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems at the site and in the surrounding landscape. The CLDPs protected and managed threatened natural resources including rare species and ecological communities. In terms of conservation benefits, the CLDPs significantly outperformed their respective baseline scenarios and the conservation subdivisions. These results imply that CLDPs can offer a low-impact alternative to conventional development and a low-cost method for protecting land when conventional conservation techniques are too expensive. In addition, our evaluation method demonstrates how planners and developers can incorporate appropriate ecological considerations when designing, reviewing, and evaluating conservation development projects.

The carbon isotopic fractionation accompanying formation of biomass by alkenone-producing algae in natural marine environments varies systematically with the concentration of dissolved phosphate. Specifically, if the fractionation is expressed by epsilon p approximately delta e - delta p, where delta e and delta p are the delta 13C values for dissolved CO2 and for algal biomass (determined by isotopic analysis of C37 alkadienones), respectively, and if Ce is the concentration of dissolved CO2, micromole kg-1, then b = 38 + 160*[PO4], where [PO4] is the concentration of dissolved phosphate, microM, and b = (25 - epsilon p)Ce. The correlation found between b and [PO4] is due to effects linking nutrient levels to growth rates and cellular carbon budgets for alkenone-containing algae, most likely by trace-metal limitations on algal growth. The relationship reported here is characteristic of 39 samples (r2 = 0.95) from the Santa Monica Basin (six different times during the annual cycle), the equatorial Pacific (boreal spring and fall cruises as well as during an iron-enrichment experiment), and the Peru upwelling zone. Points representative of samples from the Sargasso Sea ([PO4] < or = 0.1 microM) fall above the b = f[PO4] line. Analysis of correlations expected between mu (growth rate), epsilon p, and Ce shows that, for our entire data set, most variations in epsilon p result from variations in mu rather than Ce. Accordingly, before concentrations of dissolved CO2 can be estimated from isotopic fractionations, some means of accounting for variations in growth rate must be found, perhaps by drawing on relationships between [PO4] and Cd/Ca ratios in shells of planktonic foraminifera.

Previous research has indicated that a substantial portion of native flora and fauna may persist in agricultural mosaics in the Neotropics. However, understanding the relative importance of different habitat factors and management practices at different scales for sustaining this biodiversity has proven somewhat elusive. In addition, most such research has taken place in only a few fairly well-studied landscapes, thus limiting our ability to infer broader patterns that might be transferred to unstudied locales. This study expands the geographic breadth of prior research by evaluating bird and butterfly assemblages in an agricultural landscape in the Rio Copan watershed of western Honduras. The study also provides a systematic assessment of the relative influence of categorical and continuous habitat variables across a range of scales likely to be significant for birds and butterflies. Overall, we recorded 145 tree species, 139 bird species, and 119 butterfly species. Birds and butterflies displayed contrasting responses to land cover: birds were most strongly associated with dense vegetation in broadleaf forests, forest fallows, shade-grown coffee farms, and live fences, while butterflies were most abundant in live fences, pastures, and riparian forests. Bird assemblages were heavily skewed toward common and non-forest-dependent species, likely due to the young age and high disturbance level of forest plots. In contrast, butterfly assemblages contained a substantial proportion of forest-dependent species, which were observed in forests as well as pastures and live fences. Contrary to expectations, categorical land cover descriptors were more effective at explaining faunal assemblage patterns than continuous habitat descriptors related to vegetation and landscape context. In addition, plot scale (25–100 m) habitat features had a greater influence on faunal assemblages than did neighborhood scale (200–3000 m) landscape composition or structure, although differences in management intensity at the scale of the entire watershed (5–20 km) also exerted a strong influence on conservation outcomes.

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species' threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project - and avert - future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups - including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems - www.predicts.org.uk). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015. The collation of biodiversity datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents is necessary to understand historical declines and to project - and hopefully avert - future declines. We describe a newly collated database of more than 1.6 million biodiversity measurements from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. © 2014 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.