Tropical forests host a large fraction of the world’s biodiversity and are key for climate mitigation, through maintaining and increasing carbon stocks. Demands for commodities from the tropics have led to agricultural intensification at the cost of tropical forest conversion, leading to shifts in livelihoods increasingly dependent on income from agriculture. In order to assess the challenges in balancing these multiple needs of tropical areas, we modeled biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being indicators under current conditions and into three contrasting future scenarios (low and high climate forcing, conventional and sustainable development into 2050) for Mexico and Brazil. The questions posed were: 1-what are the trade-offs between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being at present for the two countries? 2- how do these trade-offs change across future scenarios? 3- what policies contribute towards sustainability? We modeled ten ES using the dynamic global vegetation model LPJmL and using ARIES (Artificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services) models, by municipality. We assessed all pairwise correlations, and emphasized the hard choices by focusing only on highly significant negative correlations. We derived empirically the corresponding efficiency frontiers and adjusted convex f (Cobb–Douglas model) and concave-convex (sigmoidal) functions to apply an interdisciplinary sustainability framework.
Results/Conclusions
At national scales, linear increases in biodiversity (jaguar habitat) corresponded to logarithmic decreases in maximum cattle production. However, there were win-win municipalities where they co-exist, with lowlands dedicated to cattle and uplands to forest conservation. Linear increases in biodiversity corresponded to logarithmic decreases in human well-being (Gross Domestic Product -GDP), with low GDP and largest biodiversity values in areas with high forest cover, low population density and low economic activity. Dramatic decreases in human well-being (Human Development Index) corresponded with small increases in carbon stock in the North of Mexico and the south of Brazil. Low climate forcing (RCP2.6) under sustainable development led to increased biodiversity conservation while keeping cattle production constant, while high climate forcing (RCP8.5) under conventional development lead to increases in cattle production. Different policies targeted (e.g. forestry law), at contrasting municipalities with different social-ecological context (high biodiversity and low GDP; low biodiversity and high GDP) were needed in the search towards sustainability. We conclude that the integration of environmental, agricultural, economic development and development policies is essential to identify trade-offs.