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• Oil palm is promoted to alleviate poverty, despite limited social impact evidence. • The social impacts of oil palm plantations are not uniformly positive nor negative. • Improved welfare had occurred for plantations developed in market-based villages. • The opposite was found for plantations developed in subsistence-based villages. • Oil palm expansion in remote forest areas requires careful planning and evaluation. Palm oil producing countries regularly promote the positive impact of oil palm agriculture on poverty alleviation, despite limited evidence about the contribution of this crop on village well-being. Past evaluations that quantify the social impact of oil palm are dominated by localized studies, which complicate the detection of generalizable findings. Moreover, only a few of these evaluations are based on rigorous case-control studies, which limits the robustness of the conclusions. Here we examined the association between the development of oil palm plantations and change in objective or material well-being between 2000 and 2014 across villages in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. We applied a matching method to evaluate the impacts of oil palm plantations across different aspects of well-being, accounting for varying time delays in the accrual and realization of benefits after plantation development. Our study reveals that the social impacts of oil-palm plantations are not uniformly positive, nor negative, and have varied systematically with biophysical locations and baseline socioeconomic conditions of nearby communities prior to oil palm development. Plantations developed in villages with low to moderate forest cover, in which the majority of communities already relied on market-oriented livelihoods, were associated with improved socioeconomic well-being compared to villages without oil palm development. However, we found the opposite for plantations developed in remote villages with higher forest cover, in which the majority of communities previously relied on subsistence-based livelihoods. Overall, oil palm growing villages were more associated with reduced rate of improvement of social and environmental well-being compared to villages without oil palm development, regardless of location and baseline community livelihoods. Our findings highlight an urgent need for careful evaluation and planning in the development of oil palm agriculture in remote forested areas. For oil palm regions that have been developed, our study shows that unsustainable livelihoods, increased socioeconomic disparity, and environmental issues remain major challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, landscapes are managed for multiple objectives to balance social, economic, and environmental goals. The Ex-Mega Rice Project (EMRP) peatland in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia provides a timely example with globally significant development, carbon, and biodiversity concerns. To inform future policy, planning, and management in the EMRP, we quantified and mapped ecosystem service values, assessed their spatial interactions, and evaluated the potential provision of ecosystem services under future land-use scenarios. We focus on key policy-relevant regulating (carbon stocks and the potential for emissions reduction), provisioning (timber, crops from smallholder agriculture, palm oil), and supporting (biodiversity) services. We found that implementation of existing land-use plans has the potential to improve total ecosystem service provision. We identify a number of significant inefficiencies, trade-offs, and unintended outcomes that may arise. For example, the potential development of existing palm oil concessions over one-third of the region may shift smallholder agriculture into low-productivity regions and substantially impact carbon and biodiversity outcomes. While improved management of conservation zones may enhance the protection of carbon stocks, not all biodiversity features will be represented, and there will be a reduction in timber harvesting and agricultural production. This study highlights how ecosystem service analyses can be structured to better inform policy, planning, and management in globally significant but data-poor regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One reason for the rapid loss of species-rich tropical forests is the high opportunity costs of forest protection. In Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), the expansion of high-revenue oil palm ( Elaeis guineensis) plantations currently threatens 3.3 million ha of forest. We estimate that payments for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) could offset the costs of stopping this deforestation at carbon prices of US$10–33 per tonne of CO2, or $2–16 per tonne if forest conservation targets only cost-efficient areas. Forty globally threatened mammals are found within these planned plantations, including the Bornean orangutan ( Pongo pygmaeus) and Borneo pygmy elephant ( Elephas maximus borneensis). Cost-efficient areas for emissions reductions also contain higher-than-average numbers of threatened mammals, indicating that there may be synergies between mitigating climate change and conserving biodiversity. While many policy and implementation issues need clarification, our economic assessment suggests that REDD could offer a financially realistic lifeline for Kalimantan's threatened mammals if it is included in future climate agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land sparing and land sharing are contrasting strategies often aimed at improving both agricultural production and biodiversity conservation in multifunctional landscapes. These strategies are embodied in land management policies at local to international scales, commonly in conjunction with other land-use policies. Evaluation of these strategies at a landscape scale, for multiple ecosystem service benefits, and multiple elements of biodiversity has not previously been attempted. We simulated the effects of applying land sharing and land sparing strategies to the agricultural zones designated by four future land-use scenarios (reflecting both current land-use and prospective land-use plans) in the Ex-Mega Rice Project region of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. We assessed impacts of each strategy on biodiversity, agricultural production, and other ecosystem service benefits at a landscape scale. We examined whether it was possible to achieve predetermined targets that reflect the aspirations and entitlements of diverse stakeholder groups. We found that the prospective land-use plans for the region would deliver considerably more benefit than the current land-use allocations, and while not all targets can be achieved, additional progress could be made with reasonable and realistic levels of land sharing or sparing. We found that species and forest types sensitive to agricultural disturbance could benefit most if land in agricultural zones was spared and prioritised for conservation. Conversely, land sharing strategies favoured the more widespread and common species, particularly if the area of wildlife-friendly agriculture is increased. However, the effectiveness of agricultural-focused land management strategies is inherently limited by the extent of agricultural zones. While agricultural land sparing and sharing strategies can deliver some gains in target achievement for multiple ecosystem services, we find that they have a limited effect over the benefits achieved by implementing better land-use allocation from the outset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]