TY - JOUR

T1 - Pathways for biodiversity enhancement in German agricultural landscapes

AU - Sponagel, Christian

AU - Thompson, Amibeth

AU - Paetow, Hubertus

AU - Mupepele, Anne Christine

AU - Bieling, Claudia

AU - Sommer, Martin

AU - Klein, Alexandra Maria

AU - Settele, Josef

AU - Finger, Robert

AU - Huber, Robert

AU - Albert, Christian

AU - Filser, Juliane

AU - Jansen, Florian

AU - Kleemann, Janina

AU - Schreiner, Vera

AU - Lakner, Sebastian

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). People and Nature published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.

PY - 2025/9/2

Y1 - 2025/9/2

N2 - Conserving biodiversity, especially in agricultural landscapes, is a major societal challenge. Broad scientific evidence exists on the impacts of single drivers on biodiversity, such as the intensification of agriculture. However, halting biodiversity decline requires a systemic understanding of the interactions between multiple drivers, which has hardly been achieved so far. Selecting Germany as a case study, the goal of our analysis is (i) to understand how various socio-economic drivers of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes interact at the national scale, (ii) to identify plausible pathways that most likely will lead to an improvement of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes and (iii) to discuss guiding principles for policy-making based on the pathways. We applied the expert-based Cross-Impact-Balance (CIB) methodology to the German agri-food system (target year 2030). Seven descriptors that represent the most relevant socio-economic drivers of biodiversity (here, we focus on species richness) in agricultural landscapes in Germany were defined. In three workshops with different groups of experts, we assessed all the interactions and impacts between these descriptors. From the workshops, seven overlapping scenarios were identified and aggregated into four main future pathways for enhancing biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. These pathways are: (1) ‘Innovation and stricter legislation’, (2) ‘Major change in protein production and CAP shift’, (3) ‘Major change in protein production and national legislation’ and (4) ‘Major social changes compensate for a lack of innovation in food production’. Socio-economic drivers interact to varying degrees. Societal values have a strong active influence on the system, e. g. agricultural policy, whereas the orientation and objectives of agriculture, e. g. focus on public goods, are rather passively determined. Conserving biodiversity thus depends upon the evolution of societal values, European and national nature conservation and agricultural policies, innovations in plant and protein production as well as on global commodity markets. A key message for policymakers is that there are generally different, complementary options for achieving the objective of improving biodiversity. This is important when specific drivers such as the CAP cannot be steered in a particular desired direction. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

AB - Conserving biodiversity, especially in agricultural landscapes, is a major societal challenge. Broad scientific evidence exists on the impacts of single drivers on biodiversity, such as the intensification of agriculture. However, halting biodiversity decline requires a systemic understanding of the interactions between multiple drivers, which has hardly been achieved so far. Selecting Germany as a case study, the goal of our analysis is (i) to understand how various socio-economic drivers of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes interact at the national scale, (ii) to identify plausible pathways that most likely will lead to an improvement of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes and (iii) to discuss guiding principles for policy-making based on the pathways. We applied the expert-based Cross-Impact-Balance (CIB) methodology to the German agri-food system (target year 2030). Seven descriptors that represent the most relevant socio-economic drivers of biodiversity (here, we focus on species richness) in agricultural landscapes in Germany were defined. In three workshops with different groups of experts, we assessed all the interactions and impacts between these descriptors. From the workshops, seven overlapping scenarios were identified and aggregated into four main future pathways for enhancing biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. These pathways are: (1) ‘Innovation and stricter legislation’, (2) ‘Major change in protein production and CAP shift’, (3) ‘Major change in protein production and national legislation’ and (4) ‘Major social changes compensate for a lack of innovation in food production’. Socio-economic drivers interact to varying degrees. Societal values have a strong active influence on the system, e. g. agricultural policy, whereas the orientation and objectives of agriculture, e. g. focus on public goods, are rather passively determined. Conserving biodiversity thus depends upon the evolution of societal values, European and national nature conservation and agricultural policies, innovations in plant and protein production as well as on global commodity markets. A key message for policymakers is that there are generally different, complementary options for achieving the objective of improving biodiversity. This is important when specific drivers such as the CAP cannot be steered in a particular desired direction. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

KW - agricultural landscape

KW - biodiversity

KW - biodiversity-enhancing scenarios

KW - Cross-Impact-Balance analysis

KW - future pathways

KW - Germany

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105011865135&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/pan3.70103

DO - 10.1002/pan3.70103

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:105011865135

VL - 7

SP - 2172

EP - 2193

JO - People and Nature

JF - People and Nature

SN - 2575-8314

IS - 9

ER -