Varieties Matter When Planning for Poverty Alleviation and Ecological Restoration in Karst Fruit Cultivation Areas

Landscapes are increasingly being managed to meet multiple objectives and balance social, economic, and environmental goals. The Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture in the Yunnan faulted Basin represent examples of areas with a range of concerns, including balancing farming with poverty alleviation, economic development, and ecological protection. Here, we set out four future land-use scenarios to quantify and map the values of key evidence-based, policy-relevant ecosystem services in three typical counties in this area. We found that implementing existing fruit-growing plans may increase the expected total value of ecosystem services due to increased acreage, but it does not actually increase the total value of ecosystem services per unit area. For example, total ecosystem service provision in Jianshui County decreased by 3% by 2023 under the current trend after the expansion of the planting area was subtracted. However, planting fruit trees with better ecological benefits in areas of greater degradation risk, can increase the delivery of ecosystem services by 10–20%. Thus, variety coordination based on detailed study of the geographical contexts and ecological-economic performance of different types of fruit cultivation can produce ecological-economic improvements beyond simple expansion and better inform county-scale policy, planning, and management interventions.