Developing land use strategies in Europe under climate change and legislative constraints

Land use, land management, and land cover change (LULCC) play a pivotal role in shaping ecosystems, influencing global and local climate, biodiversity, and the provision of resources.
Therefore, effective land use strategies need to consider the trade-offs between these often competing objectives. 

Legislative frameworks, including the EU Biodiversity Strategy, EU Forest Strategy, and national policies, aim to protect natural landscapes, enhance ecosystem services, and leverage resources for climate mitigation and the bioeconomy. However, reconciling these objectives poses a critical challenge for policymakers, land managers, and conservation stakeholders.

Using process-based ecosystem modeling and robust multi-criteria optimization, we analyzed how portfolios of forest management strategies could sustain multiple ecosystem services across diverse climate scenarios. The study incorporated strict constraints, such as protecting 10% of Europe’s land area and maintaining stable harvest levels under all climate scenarios. Results revealed significant trade-offs: limited flexibility due to the constraints led to low-diversity portfolios that compromised multi-functionality and increased regional risks. Moreover, productive northern regions would need to prioritize timber provision to compensate for declining harvests elsewhere, conflicting with targets for increasing forest carbon sinks in those regions. The uneven distribution of protected areas also introduced disparities in conservation efforts.

Our findings underscore the need for coordinated European land use strategies that address these conflicts. Complementary measures to the EU strategies are essential to achieve goals for carbon sequestration, resource availability, and ecosystem services under a changing climate. While the analysis focused on forests, the approach can be adapted to other land use types.