Sustainable Land-use Management Under Biodiversity Lag Effects.

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Environmental Economics
• Conservation Biology

Background:

• Agricultural expansion leads to habitat destruction and biodiversity loss.
• Biodiversity loss negatively impacts agricultural production via ecosystem services.
• Delayed consequences of land conversion create negative externalities and potential for ecological overshoot.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the long-term sustainability of human-nature interactions.
• To demonstrate how economic policies can internalize biodiversity externalities.
• To explore the effectiveness of a land tax in mitigating ecological overshoot.

Main Methods:

• Economic modeling of land conversion and biodiversity dynamics.
• Analysis of a land tax as a policy instrument.
• Simulation of overshoot-and-collapse scenarios under different policy interventions.

Main Results:

• Land taxation preserves biodiversity, enhances carrying capacity, and increases human well-being.
• Forward-looking taxation policies prevent or reduce ecological overshoot and collapse.
• Policy effectiveness is robust even with imperfect information on ecological dynamics.

Conclusions:

• Internalizing biodiversity-dependent externalities through economic incentives is crucial for sustainability.
• Land taxes offer a viable mechanism for achieving win-win outcomes in land-use management.
• Sustainable human-nature interactions require policies that account for delayed ecological consequences and uncertainty.