Toward an Integrated Ecology and Economics of Land Degradation and Restoration: Methods, Data, and Models

Abstract

This report assesses existing data, models, and knowledge methods and recommends a way forward for the ELD Initiative. It draws from existing research, publications, and case studies to summarize current practices and identify knowledge gaps. This report begins with a review of the methods to value land-use and management options. It emphasizes the overall development goal of sustainable human well-being, not merely growth of the market economy. To obtain sustainable well-being through improved land management depends on the interaction of four basic types of capital assets: built, human, social, and natural. For example, the value of ecosystem services is the relative contribution of natural capital in combination with the other three types of assets to produce sustainable well-being. Although this report focuses on natural capital and ecosystem services, it recognizes that the understanding, modelling, and valuing of ecosystem services requires an integrated, transdisciplinary approach which includes all four types of capital and their complex interactions. Another central part of this report is a review of computer models that could be useful for analyzing and valuing land management options. This includes farm and site scale models, watershed and regional scale models, climate change models, integrated global models, and ecosystem services models. A major conclusion of this report is that truly integrated models (i.e., models that include all four types of capital and their interactions at multiple scales) are required to meet the goals of the Initiative. Examples of these types of models do exist, but further development is necessary to make them accessible to stakeholders and used in decision-making. For further development and integration of the models themselves, a more participatory approach to model development is recommended along with the possibility of adding advanced gaming interfaces to the models to allow them to be "played" by a large number of interested parties and their trade-off decisions (and the valuations they imply) to be accumulated and compared. This report concludes with a vision of what these integrated assessment and valuation tools might look like and how they would help solve the problems of land degradation, restoration, and sustainable management.This report was commisioned by Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiativ