Restoration and rewilding programs in agricultural landscapes in some nations can incentivise production expansion in other countries, thus driving biodiversity loss in latter and causing a ‘net harm’, a new paper published in Science journal has highlighted.
Governments worldwide have been expanding protected areas to meet biodiversity targets under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls for protecting 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030. Similarly, under the European Green Deal, the European Union’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 aims to reverse ecosystem degradation and protect at least 30 per cent of land and sea areas by the end of the decade.
However, conservation and restoration efforts in wealthier nations may reduce food or fibre production by preventing habitat conversion, lowering production intensity, or halting it altogether. This, in turn, could lead to an increase in production activities in more biodiverse regions elsewhere — a phenomenon referred to as ‘biodiversity leak’.
“…there is a danger that hard-won local conservation gains will be dissipated through leakage, the displacement of human activities that harm biodiversity away from the site of an intervention to other places,” said the paper, Time to fix the biodiversity leak, published on February 13, 2025.
The study used two hypothetical large-scale restoration programmes in agricultural landscapes in the United Kingdom and Brazil, based on real-world data, to assess how restoring natural habitats could cause ‘off-site damages’.
In the UK scenario, researchers modelled the restoration of 1,000 square kilometres (km²) of native habitats on arable farmland currently supporting a three-year crop rotation of wheat, rapeseed and barley. This would result in a reduction in domestic production of the three crops.
Without reductions in demand or increases in yield within the UK, the production loss would likely be compensated through increased imports, primarily from highly biodiverse countries. The study found that in this case, leakage impacts were likely to outweigh local benefits substantially.
In Brazil, the study examined the restoration of 1,000 km² of habitat on land currently used for soybean production with an average yield. While local biodiversity would benefit, a reduction in soy exports could lead to increased production in other soy-exporting countries, thereby impacting their biodiversity.
Brazil is the world’s largest soy exporter. The study suggested that unless demand was reduced or yields were improved elsewhere, restoring natural habitats on soy-producing land would cause market leakage, though mainly to less biodiverse countries.
“In this case, local biodiversity gains probably exceed losses elsewhere: The intervention is less beneficial than it might first seem but still generates net conservation gains,” the paper noted, adding that however, if activities were displaced to more biodiverse (or less productive) places, leakage impacts may exceed local benefits, so that well-intentioned efforts cause net harm.
Despite its potential impact, biodiversity leakage remains largely overlooked, as policies and projects tend to focus on local, national or regional targets, without considering the broader consequences.
A survey of 100 managers overseeing tropical conservation projects found that 37 per cent were unaware of biodiversity leakage, and fewer than half had undertaken efforts to mitigate its impact.
The issue is notably absent from recent global biodiversity goals and targets. “Likewise, the Japanese government’s plans for a pesticide-free Green Food System and the EU’s Biodiversity and Forestry Strategies are mute on how the leakage of forgone production will affect biodiversity and other environmental outcomes farther afield,” said the paper.
As nations ramp up efforts to meet biodiversity targets, addressing biodiversity leakage will be crucial to ensuring that conservation and restoration efforts do not result in unintended environmental consequences elsewhere.
The authors recommended several measures to mitigate biodiversity leakage:
Tracking changes in food or wood production within intervention areas as part of routine programme monitoring.
Scrutinising projects that report near-zero losses in production to distinguish those with effective leakage mitigation from those with little or no conservation impact.
Including explicit consideration of both local and long-range leakage in national and international conservation policies.
Reducing demand for high-leakage goods and improving efficiencies in line with production decreases.
Targeting conservation efforts in areas where biodiversity restoration will cause minimal displacement of production.
Increasing yields within or near conservation project areas to offset losses.