Conference Agenda

While shifting ecological and land use dynamics have been shown to affect restoration

targeting decisions, the impact of changing climatic conditions on economic value

remains less explored. Climate change can be expected to affect both the benefits and

costs of a particular restoration project, through changing crop yields, shifting

vegetation, and urbanization, among other factors, potentially leading to abandonment

of sites or forgone opportunity. Here, we first present a framework for understanding

the effect of projected social and ecological changes on potential economic value of a

restoration project. We then apply the model to an empirical context of interest: habitat-

focused forest planting in Brazil, focusing on the implications of two specific climate

change projections: changing crop yields and changing forest cover habitat. We find

that active restoration could yield a positive return in a majority of grid cells across the

country, monetizing benefits of restored lands by considering habitat value alone, yet

that integrating projections of conditions in 2050 yields greater expected benefits than

present conditions would suggest, with an increase of 41 percent in the median tract

and significant spatial variation. Our results illustrate the importance of accounting for

projected changes in conditions in restoration planning and find support for the

economic value of wide-scale restoration programs which provide biodiversity

protection.