Trade-offs between multifunctionality and profit in tropical smallholder landscapes

TLDR

Land‑use transitions can improve smallholder livelihoods, yet the economic‑ecological trade‑offs remain poorly understood. We conducted an interdisciplinary study of environmental, social, and economic impacts of land‑use transitions in Sumatra, Indonesia. Our results show that converting forests and agroforestry to rubber and oil palm monocultures generates widespread biodiversity‑profit trade‑offs, reduces ecosystem multifunctionality, and that while optimal landscape mixes can partially mitigate these losses, intensive monocultures still yield higher profits, underscoring the need for policy reforms to align economic incentives with ecological outcomes.

Abstract

Abstract Land-use transitions can enhance the livelihoods of smallholder farmers but potential economic-ecological trade-offs remain poorly understood. Here, we present an interdisciplinary study of the environmental, social and economic consequences of land-use transitions in a tropical smallholder landscape on Sumatra, Indonesia. We find widespread biodiversity-profit trade-offs resulting from land-use transitions from forest and agroforestry systems to rubber and oil palm monocultures, for 26,894 aboveground and belowground species and whole-ecosystem multidiversity. Despite variation between ecosystem functions, profit gains come at the expense of ecosystem multifunctionality, indicating far-reaching ecosystem deterioration. We identify landscape compositions that can mitigate trade-offs under optimal land-use allocation but also show that intensive monocultures always lead to higher profits. These findings suggest that, to reduce losses in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, changes in economic incentive structures through well-designed policies are urgently needed.