Can nature restoration and economic productivity go hand in hand? A new study finds that the EU's ambitious Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) is essential to achieving biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation targets and that it could be implemented without compromising the supply of agricultural and forest products.
Ensuring that biodiversity conservation actions are integrated with land management strategies is key for long-term sustainability. Doing so can ensure that ecosystems continue to provide essential services such as pollination, water purification, and carbon storage, all of which support agriculture and forestry production. If biodiversity is neglected in favor of short-term economic gains, ecosystem degradation can lead to soil erosion, loss of natural pest control, and reduced resilience to climate change, ultimately harming both nature and livelihoods.
By using an integrated spatial planning approach, the authors of the new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution show that strategic restoration efforts can yield significant biodiversity and climate benefits while ensuring continued food and timber production across Europe.
"We wanted to explore whether nature restoration goals and economic needs are inherently at odds. Our findings suggest that, with careful planning, restoration can indeed lead to a win-win scenario for biodiversity and sustainable production," explains lead author Melissa Chapman, an alumna of the IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program and winner of the 2022 IIASA Peccei Award, who is now an incoming assistant professor at ETH Zürich. "What started as a small summer project turned into a multi-year collaborative effort due to evolving policy discussions. As a result, the analysis is more comprehensive and policy-relevant," she says.
Without the implementation of the NRR, biodiversity losses in Europe are expected to continue or worsen, making restoration efforts critical for mitigating these declines. The study provides scientific insights into how land use can be allocated efficiently to meet conservation, restoration, and production goals under different economic and policy scenarios. This research is particularly relevant and timely as EU Member States prepare their National Restoration Plans to fulfill the NRR's goal of restoring 20% of land and water by 2030.
"There is large diversity with which cropland, pasture, or forest can be managed, and how that impacts biodiversity, climate, and economic activities. This challenges our understanding of the many trade-offs associated with future EU land management, but this diversity can also be an opportunity to identify win-win solutions," says David Leclère, a study coauthor and senior research scholar in the IIASA Integrated Biosphere Future Research Group.
"Our approach enables the simultaneous consideration and planning of multiple actions and sectors, minimizing potential conflicts and more strategically utilizing each sector's contribution to food and timber provision, nature conservation, and climate mitigation," adds study coauthor Martin Jung, a senior research scholar in the IIASA Biodiversity, Ecology, and Conservation Research Group.
As EU Member States draft their National Restoration Plans, they will outline key areas, species, and habitats targeted by restoration measures and determine baseline levels and targets levels of restoration indicators as well as implementation mechanisms.
"This work, and similar studies done at national scales, can help shape Nature Restoration Plans. It can help to identify which areas to focus on for restoration and conservation, estimate how these efforts can simultaneously fight climate change, and look at how the plans might affect industries like farming or forestry, which in turns helps to determine what kind of financial or other support the relevant sectors might need," concludes Piero Visconti, who conceived the study and leads the Biodiversity, Ecology, and Conservation Research Group at IIASA.
Reference:
Chapman, M., Jung, M., Leclere, D., Boettiger, C., Augustynczik, A.L.D., Gusti, M., Ringwald, L., and Visconti, P. (2025). Meeting EU biodiversity targets under future land-use demands. Nature Ecology & Evolution DOI: 10.1038/s41559-025-02671-1
