Spatially explicit approaches to build food, biodiversity, and climate positive futures

The climate crisis has made it clear that we cannot address the challenges of conservation, food security, and greenhouse gas emissions in isolation - we need an approach that synthesizes data on complex interactions across water, energy, food, and environmental systems across time. Spatial planning, which incorporates the analysis and planning of land use activities and their interactions using modelling and mapping tools, could help achieve long-term goal setting that aids decision makers.

The CGIAR Initiative on NEXUS Gains webinar on July 10, "Spatially explicit approaches at the food-biodiversity-climate nexus," was timely, according to Sarah Jones, moderator and scientist with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT: "In light of the Global Biodiversity Framework, countries have committed to biodiversity inclusive spatial planning. They've also committed to shifting to biodiversity and agroecological food systems. And they are now in the process of deciding how they can actually do this."

Hotspot mapping for sustainable food production

Sarika Mittra, Consultant with the Alliance, began with a presentation on an approach to agrobiodiversity hotspot and production system threat mapping she developed with Sarah Jones and Natalia Estrada Carmona. The objective was to identify where farming landscapes are facing threats to sustainable food production in India, and rank these threats to highlight where action should be taken.

Following a thorough screening of available data sets, the researchers selected indicators according to the risk they posed to water, environment, food, energy, and social components. Spatial threat layers on water stress, water quality, land degradation, livestock diversity, intactness of landscape, and climate vulnerability were then overlaid to map hotspots across India. The maps revealed which areas were most vulnerable, how many threats they faced, and what the contribution of each indicator was to the overall threat.

Provisional threat hotspot map for foodscapes in India.

Local validation and co-designing of local solutions was a critical part of their methodology, according to Mittra: "The question that comes up is, are the spatial patterns correct? Did we miss something that we should have included? Are there issues that are hyperlocal? We need to validate the results with expert input that will also be context-specific."

The researchers also intend to design an online interactive tool for intervention planning for practitioners and policy makers. The end result is a meticulously developed planning tool that has high potential utility for policy makers across ministries, for whom the maps can be customized for ease of visualization and interpretation.

Using science for long-term climate strategies

The second presentation was by Federico Frank, Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, Argentina. As a member of the FABLE consortium, a network of food and land use system modelers and researchers, Frank has worked on projects to provide the Argentinian Government with evidence to support the elaboration of national food and land use strategies responsive to the needs of climate change.

Frank and his colleagues focused on two scenarios - business as usual (BAU) and carbon neutrality. They started by inputting data into the FABLE calculator, which allocates land use, food production, and consumption levels. Results indicated that the BAU scenarios would lead to a doubling of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But as Frank pointed out, "All this is modelled without the ability to provide maps for the stakeholders to really see what this would mean in space." So they linked the results to a second model, Dinamica Ego, which uses known distributions of land uses to build "transition matrixes" across time in the form of maps. They then combined these maps with a third model, Nature Map, to map the areas in Argentina to be prioritized to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Comparison of business as usual and carbon neutral scenarios in Argentina.

Subsequent discussions with stakeholders about achieving the scenarios were revealing. The carbon neutrality scenario is "biophysically possible, it's climatically and ecologically sustainable, but - sadly, it has little consensus among stakeholders and actors." Frank concluded on a pragmatic note: "In between these two extreme scenarios is the discussion that we are supposed to continue between the government stakeholders and the modelling team - not in the air, but with the help of the results of this modelling exercise."

Streaming spatially explicit approaches into the Global Biodiversity Framework

Following the presentations, Carolina Navarette Frias, Senior Advisor with the Alliance, shared her insights on how spatially explicit approaches can support the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Referring to Target 1, which pinpoints biodiversity inclusive spatial planning, she said, "If we're thinking about this from a nexus approach, there is not really a lot of guidance." Frias emphasized the need to provide more evidence and clarity on biodiversity inclusive planning from a nexus perspective, along with capacity building and technical cooperation. This could be achieved, she suggested, through the Framework's Regional and Sub-Regional Technical Support Centers.

Samantha Hill, Principal Scientist at the UN Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre, followed up with comments on how best to integrate spatial planning given the complexity, context-specific, and indeed value-driven nature of biodiversity and agriculture. While acknowledging the urgency of coordination to achieve global and national goals, Hill warned, "Unless the maps are produced with local context and with recognition of local values and needs, there is a large risk that their utility will be diminished." With the impressive advances that have been made in data processing, mapping, and modelling, she added, we have a much better understanding of the impacts of management actions, allowing for much better planning.

The discussion that followed touched on challenges to using spatially explicit planning, such as the risk of overinterpreting maps, and the need to account for interactions between sub-models to capture trade-offs between elements. The latter consideration is, of course, characteristic of how NEXUS Gains applies systems thinking. Overcoming siloed approaches applies as much to science as policy and, concluding the session, Jones identified her key takeaway: "We need to fill gaps in data, tools, and communication across disciplines in both science and policy, and be careful to integrate local concerns and knowledge, to generate maps that are really useful for decision-making."

Didn't catch the webinar? You can watch it here.

View the presentation slides by Sarika Mittra View the presentation slides by Federico Frank

Learn more about all the webinars in the series on the NEXUS Gains Talks landing pageand subscribe to the NEXUS Gains newsletterto be the first to hear about upcoming webinars.

This work was carried out under the CGIAR Initiative on NEXUS Gains, which is grateful for the support of CGIAR Trust Fund contributors: www.cgiar.org/funders

Header image: A farmer harvests the season's cauliflower crop in Himachal Pradesh, India. Photo by Neil Palmer/CIAT.

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