Global land futures under values-based interpretations of the Global Biodiversity Framework

The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF) sets an ambitious pathway towards living in harmony with nature by 2050, while acknowledging that diverse value perspectives can shape how targets are interpreted, operationalised and implemented.  To explore these alternative pathways, we use the Nature Futures Framework (NFF) to define and model plausible future scenarios. These scenarios are simulated in a global land system model, LandSyMM, that couples land-use decision-making, food and timber demand, and global trade. For each NFF value perspective, spatial protection and restoration masks are generated using a prioritisation approach, and implemented alongside management‑intensity limits that span a sparing‑to‑sharing gradient inside and outside protected areas. Nine scenarios are run: a reference pathway and four NFF perspectives—Nature for Nature (NfN), a national variant of NfN (NfNl), Nature for Society (NfS) and Nature as Culture (NaC)—each in Policy‑Only (nature policy with SSP2 indirect drivers) and Full variants (nature policy plus value‑consistent indirect drivers for diets, trade and technology). 

Results show that alternative values based implementation of KM-GBF reallocate where production and conservation occur, and change whether particular locations intensify or de intensify, with knock on displacement and supply chain effects. These results reveal systematic contrasts and emergent hotspots between values-based implementations of global nature policy, with hotspots at active land‑use frontiers, e.g., tropical South America and Southeast Asia. The policy implementations lead to some increases in food prices, with impacts on diets, but including indirect drivers substantially reduces these impacts. The modelled land system outcomes include a continuum of land-use intensity as well as changes in land-cover category and crop type annually for 2021–2100 at 0.5° spatial resolution with continuous management fields (nitrogen fertiliser application, irrigation water use, timber rotation length). Additionally, land-cover maps are downscaled to 0.01°, and the endogenously derived food and timber prices and consumption data are provided, enabling analysis of wider socioeconomic trade-offs in achieving conservation commitments. These data are suitable as forcings for biodiversity and ecosystem modelling.  These value‑explicit, management‑sensitive datasets are directly usable for global assessments and timely for revising National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans.