Elsevier

Biological Conservation

Volume 261, September 2021, 109283
Biological Conservation

Private reserves suffer from the same location biases of public protected areas

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109283Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Economic processes determine landowner decision around private land conservation.

  • Decision-making maximizes property income and reduces restoration costs.

  • Farms with low vegetation cover are less likely to restore or set in-farm reserves.

  • Conservation in-farm in our area has a similar location bias to protected areas.

Abstract

Setting aside private land is an essential component of the biodiversity crisis response. In Brazil, landowners are required to have Legal Reserves (LR) (20%–80% of their property set aside for native vegetation) which, if degraded, need to be restored. Alternatively, landowners can compensate for an LR deficit by purchasing surplus credits. Each landowner can define the location and spatial arrangement of their LR, affecting the reserve's ability to maintain biodiversity and provide ecosystem services (ES). We used hierarchical models to determine drivers for the amount and location of those LR in 3622 farms. The likelihood of setting aside part of the farm as LR (avoiding off-farm compensation) increased with farm size and extent of native vegetation cover, particularly for riparian areas and steep slopes, where conserving vegetation is also mandated in what are called Areas of Permanent Protection (APP). Properties with APP were more likely to meet the full LR requirement within their areas if located in areas of higher transportation costs and lower agricultural suitability. Within properties, the location of LR was mostly in areas with low agricultural suitability, high transportation cost, and close to APP. Landowners' decisions intend to maximize property income and reduce restoration costs, resulting in a spatial pattern similar to public protected areas — usually located on marginal land for agriculture. These areas do not necessarily provide the greatest biodiversity and ES benefits, suggesting that government interventions may be needed to encourage landowners to set aside native vegetation in ways that maximize conservation and ES outcomes.

Introduction

One of the main policies in response to the biodiversity crisis (Cardinale et al., 2012; IPBES, 2019) is the creation of new protected areas worldwide (UNEP-WCMC, 2018). However, the location of public protected areas show a strong bias towards lands with high elevation, steeper slopes, low agricultural productivity, and low human density, not always considering biodiversity hotspots or ecological representativeness (Venter et al., 2018; Watson et al., 2014). It is thus pertinent that to achieve maximum conservation outcomes, these biases need to be reduced.

One way to reduce bias is to increase protected areas on private land (Cortés Capano et al., 2019; Drescher and Brenner, 2018). Agriculture covers >30% of the Earth's ice-free surface (Ellis et al., 2010), mostly on private property. In turn, private properties shelter vast amounts of native vegetation, for instance, 56% of the United States forests (Sass et al., 2017), 28% of Europe's forests (Pulla et al., 2013) and 53% of the native vegetation in Brazil (Freitas et al., 2017). Protecting or enhancing natural vegetation on private properties also has benefits to private landholders beyond conservation itself. Native vegetation within farms can help increase agricultural production through the provision of ecosystem services (Dainese et al., 2019). Natural pest control and pollination provided by native vegetation (Boesing et al., 2017; Potts et al., 2016; Rand et al., 2006) make economic contributions between US dollars 10–1500/ha globally (Lautenbach et al., 2012; Naranjo et al., 2015; Pimentel et al., 1997).

Some countries are implementing policies to set aside private areas for conservation in voluntary or mandatory schemes (Garibaldi et al., 2020). Brazil, in particular, has an environmental regulation, the Native Vegetation Protection Law (Federal Law 12.651/2012), which establishes that all rural properties must have natural vegetation set aside as mandatory Areas of Permanent Protection (APP; sensitive areas such as riparian vegetation, hilltops, and steep slopes) and Legal Reserves. Legal Reserves should cover from 20% to 80% of the total property area, depending on the property's biome and physiognomy, and can include APP. They are intended to support the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes, as well as provide opportunities to the sustainable use of natural resources provided by natural vegetation, and can combine native and non-native species (up to 50% of Legal Reserves area). They are thus of vital importance for biodiversity protection, water and energy security, climate regulation, and ecosystem service provision (Metzger et al., 2019). Farmers that do not have the full area of Legal Reserves vegetated must restore it, or opt for a compensation scheme outside their property (for example, trading with landowners with Legal Reserves surplus) (Mello et al., 2021a, Mello et al., 2021b). The possibility of compensation aims to allow landowners whose properties have high opportunity costs to conserve or restore less valuable areas outside their limits (May et al., 2015). Although important to attenuate conflicts between conservation and agricultural production, compensation schemes can substantially reduce the need to do restoration, thus bringing no additionality in terms of conservation. In a scenario of full off-site compensation, 85% of the legal deficit on the Atlantic Forest could be compensated in existing vegetation, without the need of restoration (Mello et al., 2021b), a missed opportunity for a hotspot biome with such high level of local endemism (Myers et al., 2000) and fragmentation (Ribeiro et al., 2009). Furthermore, the legal geographical limit for compensation is in the scale of the entire biome. For biomes such as the Atlantic Forest, in which the location of remnant fragments is largely concentrated on a few regions (Ribeiro et al., 2009) compensation could be placed thousands of kilometres from the original area to be compensated, resulting in the protection of very distinct areas, in terms of species composition, in relation to those with legal deficit.

At present, vegetated areas considered as Legal Reserves cover 167 million ha (Metzger et al., 2019) and represent nearly half of the remaining native vegetation areas in Brazil (Soares-Filho et al., 2014), highlighting the importance of their maintenance. The proportion of remnant vegetation in Legal Reserves is highest for the Atlantic Forest biome (70% of remnant vegetation), where most of the Brazilian population lives (Rezende et al., 2018). Nevertheless, to fully achieve the objectives of Legal Reserves, their location should be adequately planned in a landscape perspective to support species survival in fragmented landscapes (Fahrig, 2017; Tambosi et al., 2014) while favoring ecosystem services that can increase agricultural productivity (Boesing et al., 2017; Garibaldi et al., 2011).

The location of Legal Reserves in Brazil, as for other types of within-farms reserves globally, is dependent on economic factors. For instance, larger and more profitable farms tend to retain more native vegetation (Leite et al., 2020; Michalski et al., 2010; Trevisan et al., 2016) and are more likely to engage in conservation actions (Nielsen et al., 2017). For compliance with Brazil's Native Vegetation Protection law, the amount of vegetation on farm can directly impact farmers' livelihoods either through the cost of required restoration and/or by loss of productive areas (Jung et al., 2017). As such, restoration actions in Brazil are expected to focus predominantly on degraded pastures, which represent a pool of available land with relatively low opportunity costs (Mello et al., 2021b; Strassburg et al., 2014).

To enforce the implementation of the Native Vegetation Protection Law, in 2012 the Brazilian Government created a self-declaratory public-access database, named CAR (Portuguese acronym for environmental rural register), in which each landowner delimits the size and location of their Legal Reserves. This extensive CAR database, gathering more than 5.6 million properties and nearly 550 million ha of land (in July 2020), offers a unique opportunity to evaluate landowners management choices in response to a land-regulation policy.

Here we use CAR data to shed light on factors related to farmers' decisions about the amount and spatial location of Legal Reserves within their properties and consider the implications of their choices for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provision. We address two important questions: (1) which drivers predict the proportion of Legal Reserves the landowners declare inside their properties versus outside their land?; (2) For landowners that decided to allocate Legal Reserves inside their properties, which drivers can predict where those Legal Reserves are located? Following the pattern already described for public protected areas (Venter et al., 2018; Watson et al., 2014) and private land (Jung et al., 2017), we expected that land management decisions concerning Legal Reserves would be made to maximize farm income. Farms located in marginal areas for agriculture production or less profitable were thus expected to set aside larger proportions of Legal Reserves inside their properties. We also expected that larger properties, with higher vegetation cover, would declare higher proportions of Legal Reserves in-property, as opposed to paying for off-farm credits. Considering the same reasoning, we also expected landowners will tend to locate their Legal Reserves within marginal lands. Additionally, we evaluated whether farmers are choosing to allocate Legal Reserves near existing native vegetation patches, which would increase patch size and could contribute to biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provision.

Section snippets

Study region

To test which drivers are affecting choices about the amount and spatial location of Legal Reserves, our sample included 164 municipalities between the borders of Minas Gerais (MG) and Sao Paulo (SP) States of southeastern Brazil, in one of the most important and traditional regions for coffee production (Fig. 1). This region was predominantly covered by the Atlantic Forest, a highly biodiverse tropical forest, which suffered a long history of deforestation and fragmentation (Joly et al., 2014

Results

The 3622 properties we studied covered 766,592.9 ha, of which 13.7% (105,265 ha) was natural vegetation. The agricultural area was composed of pasture (54%), crops (42%) and a small presence of forestry (4%). Less than half of the sampled properties (49%) had allocated less than 18% of their area as Legal Reserve, while the majority (51%) signalled the full Legal Reserve inside the farm or even a surplus (Box 2). Except for properties with no Legal Reserve declared, vegetation cover increases

Discussion

The major drivers influencing Legal Reserve allocation are vegetation in-farm, property size, transportation costs, and agricultural suitability. Landowners whose properties are larger, with lower agricultural suitability, higher transportation costs and have more vegetation in farm are more likely to allocate Legal Reserves in their farms. This suggests that economic processes are the primary drivers determining landowner decisions around investment in Legal Reserves. We also show that farmers

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Francisco d'Albertas: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Writing – review & editing. Adrian González-Chaves: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing. Clarice Borges-Matos: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. Vitor Zago de Almeida Paciello: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing. Martine Maron: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. Jean Paul Metzger: Conceptualization,

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We thank Imaflora for contributing with data, Gianluca Cerullo and Charles Emogor for comments on the manuscript and two anonymous reviewers for a very careful review. We also thank the Thematic Project “Relationships between landscape structure, ecological processes, biodiversity and ecosystem services”, funded by São Paulo Research Foundation – FAPESP [2013/23457-6]. Francisco d'Albertas was funded by FAPESP [2018/22881-2] and by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior

References (89)

  • N. Rada et al.

    Agricultural productivity growth in Brazil: large and small farms excel

    Food Policy

    (2019)
  • C.L. Rezende et al.

    From hotspot to hopespot: an opportunity for the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

    Perspect. Ecol. Conserv.

    (2018)
  • M.C. Ribeiro et al.

    The Brazilian Atlantic Forest: how much is left, and how is the remaining forest distributed? Implications for conservation

    Biol. Conserv.

    (2009)
  • M. Rouget et al.

    The current configuration of protected areas in the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa—reservation bias and representation of biodiversity patterns and processes

    Biol. Conser. Conserv. Plann. Cape Flor. Reg.

    (2003)
  • P.G.C. Ruggiero et al.

    Payment for ecosystem services programs in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: effective but not enough

    Land Use Policy

    (2019)
  • F.T. Saturni et al.

    Landscape structure influences bee community and coffee pollination at different spatial scales

    Agric. Ecosyst. Environ.

    (2016)
  • M. Stefanes et al.

    Property size drives differences in forest code compliance in the Brazilian Cerrado

    Land Use Policy

    (2018)
  • B.B.N. Strassburg et al.

    When enough should be enough: improving the use of current agricultural lands could meet production demands and spare natural habitats in Brazil

    Glob. Environ. Chang.

    (2014)
  • A.C.D. Trevisan et al.

    Farmer perceptions, policy and reforestation in Santa Catarina, Brazil

    Ecol. Econ.

    (2016)
  • N. Aristizábal et al.

    Landscape structure regulates pest control provided by ants in sun coffee farms

    J. Appl. Ecol.

    (2019)
  • V. Arroyo-Rodríguez et al.

    Designing optimal human-modified landscapes for forest biodiversity conservation

    Ecol. Lett.

    (2020)
  • A.A. Azevedo et al.

    Limits of Brazil’s Forest Code as a means to end illegal deforestation

    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.

    (2017)
  • C. Banks-Leite et al.

    Using ecological thresholds to evaluate the costs and benefits of set-asides in a biodiversity hotspot

    Science

    (2014)
  • M. Beckmann et al.

    Conventional land-use intensification reduces species richness and increases production: a global meta-analysis

    Glob. Chang. Biol.

    (2019)
  • J.M.R. Benayas et al.

    Enhancement of biodiversity and ecosystem services by ecological restoration: a meta-analysis

    Science

    (2009)
  • A.L. Boesing et al.

    Effects of landscape structure on avian-mediated insect pest control services: a review

    Landsc. Ecol.

    (2017)
  • A.L. Boesing et al.

    Biodiversity extinction thresholds are modulated by matrix type

    Ecography

    (2018)
  • M. Borda-Nino et al.

    Integrating farmers’ decisions on the assessment of forest regeneration drivers in a rural landscape of Southeastern Brazil

  • D. Boscolo et al.

    Isolation determines patterns of species presence in highly fragmented landscapes

    Ecography

    (2011)
  • M. Bowman et al.

    Economic factors affecting diversified farming systems

    Ecol. Soc.

    (2013)
  • P.H.S. Brancalion et al.

    Global restoration opportunities in tropical rainforest landscapes

    Sci. Adv.

    (2019)
  • P.H.S. Brancalion et al.

    Exotic eucalypts: from demonized trees to allies of tropical forest restoration?

    J. Appl. Ecol.

    (2020)
  • J.M. Bullock et al.

    Long-term enhancement of agricultural production by restoration of biodiversity

    J. Appl. Ecol.

    (2007)
  • A. Calaboni et al.

    The forest transition in São Paulo, Brazil: historical patterns and potential drivers

    Ecol. Soc.

    (2018)
  • A. Calle

    Partnering with cattle ranchers for forest landscape restoration

    Ambio

    (2020)
  • B.J. Cardinale et al.

    Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity

    Nature

    (2012)
  • E.R. de Castro et al.

    Rural credit and agricultural supply in Brazil

    Agric. Econ.

    (2012)
  • R.L. Chazdon et al.

    People, Primates and Predators in the Pontal: From Endangered Species Conservation to Forest and Landscape Restoration in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest

    (2020)
  • A. Classen et al.

    Complementary ecosystem services provided by pest predators and pollinators increase quantity and quality of coffee yields

    Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci.

    (2014)
  • R. Crouzeilles et al.

    A global meta-analysis on the ecological drivers of forest restoration success

    Nat. Commun.

    (2016)
  • M. Dainese et al.

    A global synthesis reveals biodiversity-mediated benefits for crop production

    Sci. Adv.

    (2019)
  • M. Drescher et al.

    The practice and promise of private land conservation

    Ecol. Soc.

    (2018)
  • Cited by (7)

    • Agricultural certification as a complementary tool for environmental law compliance

      2023, Biological Conservation
      Citation Excerpt :

      Nevertheless, Legal Reserves can be compensated off-farm and we were not able to evaluate compliance with this requirement since compensation information is not publicly available. Furthermore, in the study region, more than half of the farmers allocated at least the minimal Legal Reserve requirement area within their lands (d’Albertas et al., 2021). As observed here, our targeted farms had already on average low vegetation deficit outside APPs.

    • Nine actions to successfully restore tropical agroecosystems

      2022, Trends in Ecology and Evolution
      Citation Excerpt :

      Advances in technology can also help to collect georeferenced socioeconomic data. For instance, in Brazil, farmers submit information on farm ownership, management, and landscape context (e.g., percentage cover of cultivated and natural habitat, including environmentally sensitive areas such as riparian zones) to an online georeferenced database [47]. These data can be coupled with demographic data from government censuses, providing a highly valuable socioecological dataset that restoration scientists can use (Figure 1 and Box 3).

    • Legal reserves ensure alpha and beta ant diversity in highly modified agricultural landscapes

      2022, Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation
      Citation Excerpt :

      The LRs are responsible for housing most of the protected vegetation in Brazil, since they cover an area larger than the Conservation Units (Lewinsohn, 2010). Thus, despite of recent controversy and the fact that several farmers do not maintain the integrity of LRs in their properties (D’Albertas et al., 2021), the idealized function of the LRs is to ensure biodiversity and the various associated ecosystem services provided to rural properties such as to ensure climate sustainability and regulation, minimize erosion and soil loss, control the emission of greenhouse gasses, water provisioning, water quality regulation, preventing the silting up of rivers affecting water quality, pollination, biological control of pests and diseases (Dainese et al., 2019; Metzger et al., 2019). However, the preservation of LRs has been threatened by initiatives of the current Brazilian government, such as, for example, the attempt to approve Law no. 2362/19, which proposes to completely remove the requirement to maintain Legal Reserve areas (Abessa et al., 2019).

    • Economics of Ecosystem Restoration

      2023, Annual Review of Resource Economics
    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text