Managing biodiversity-carbon-production trade-off in multi-stakeholder landscapes

Land is a scarce resource increasingly contested for multiple uses, particularly as rising environmental concerns heighten pressures to enhance biodiversity and to facilitate natural carbon sequestration processes, while maintaining food production. In this context, our case study examines a community-driven agroforestry project that has attracted both a soil-carbon project developer and a biodiversity-credit issuer, each working to align their needs with those of local farmers, landowners, the farmers’ cooperative, and potential credit buyers at both local and global scales. The case unfolds in Rio Tule Watershed, in Guerrero region, Southwest of Mexico, an area dominated by Tropical Dry Forest (TDF) biomes which are severely impacted by deforestation and land use change for intensive agricultural use. The community’s farmlands are particularly significant because their position across the upper and lower watershed creates ecological linkages that connect and influence neighboring ecosystems. We conducted in-depth interviews with these stakeholders to understand how their differing needs and power dynamics shape decision-making and influence the practical details of project implementation. While the promotion of carbon and biodiversity conservation is broadly welcomed within the community, asymmetrical access to knowledge and information could place farmers in a vulnerable position, limiting their ability to make fully informed decisions. Such case could also result in uneven distribution of responsibilities, with farmers bearing disproportionate risks and workloads associated with monitoring and compliance. To mitigate these conflicting interests, establishing clear guidelines for selecting metrics, designing monitoring mechanisms for carbon and biodiversity, and defining the project’s impact boundaries is essential, without compromising their commercial crop productivity that sustain local livelihoods. Accordingly, our case study presents a integrated framework drawing on both stakeholder analysis and a systematic assessment of existing metrics and international standards to illustrate possible options tailored to their differing priorities from crop genetics and soil health at the farm-level to broader ecosystem level.