How to make land use policy decisions: Integrating science and economics to deliver connected climate, biodiversity, and food objectives.

Land use change is crucial to addressing the existential threats of climate change and biodiversity loss while enhancing food security [M. Zurek , , 1416-1421 (2022)]. The interconnected and spatially varying nature of the impacts of land use change means that these challenges must be addressed simultaneously [H.

Natural capital approaches for the optimal design of policies for nature recovery.

By embedding a spatially explicit ecosystem services modelling tool within a policy simulator we examine the insights that natural capital analysis can bring to the design of policies for nature recovery. Our study is illustrated through a case example of policies incentivising the establishment of new natural habitat in England. We find that a policy mirroring the current practice of offering payments per hectare of habitat creation fails to break even, delivering less value in improved flows of ecosystem services than public money spent and only 26% of that which is theoretically achievable.

Gridded fossil CO emissions and related O combustion consistent with national inventories 1959-2018.

Quantification of CO fluxes at the Earth's surface is required to evaluate the causes and drivers of observed increases in atmospheric CO concentrations. Atmospheric inversion models disaggregate observed variations in atmospheric CO concentration to variability in CO emissions and sinks. They require prior constraints fossil CO emissions.