Balancing land use for conservation, agriculture, and renewable energy

Demand for land is increasing due to mounting energy and development needs. Growing demand for food coupled with climate policy commitments calling for reduced greenhouse gas emissions will result in more land being used for agricultural and renewable energy development. At the same time, conserving land for biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people (NCP) is imperative for achieving international climate, sustainable development, and biodiversity goals. Meeting these interconnected objectives requires the efficient and equitable allocation of land to different sectors. We present a flexible, multiple-objective framework for using integer linear programming to strategically allocate land under climate change to mitigate threats to biodiversity and NCP while supporting development. The application of the framework at a planetary scale shows that if agriculture and renewable energy development are planned without consideration of biodiversity and NCP, future demands for land (6.2 million km2 globally) could impact nearly 1 million km2 of high-priority areas for nature, habitats of 440 threatened vertebrate species, and 21 Gt of vulnerable carbon stocks. Multi-sector planning can mitigate potential land conflict, reducing the number of species exposed by 15% and the amount of carbon loss by 19%. If development proceeds without coordinated planning, there is insufficient land available to achieve conservation and development targets. Our findings underscore the need to ensure critical areas for biodiversity, carbon storage, and NCP are conserved; reduce land demand for food and energy; meet remaining demand more efficiently through spatial targeting; and coordinate land use across sectors more intentionally, such as through multi-functional landscapes.