Over the coming decades, society will have to balance competing needs for land to feed the growing human population, provide resources and energy to satisfy the ever-accelerating human consumption, slow global warming and reduce the rate of loss of ecosystem services and biodiversity. Decision makers need to balance different demands on land and take into account potential changes in these demands in the future, for example due to projected population growth, urbanisation and climate change. At the same time many other and more uncertain factors may influence that future, such as globalisation and trade agreements, commodity markets, governance regimes and regional integration, and therefore affect policy outcomes.

Implications for biodiversity and ecosystem services of demands upon land may vary through time and space. It is therefore crucial that decision makers have access to spatially explicit information and analyses on the potential effects of different trajectories of human-induced landscape change. This information can support the development of policies that are robust and adaptable so that they achieve their intended outcomes even under an unpredictable future.

This technical report is an output of UNEP-WCMC's project on Engaging stakeholders in using scenarios of land use change due to agricultural commodity development in the Lake Victoria Basin funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The report presents results of spatial analyses in support of the project objective to “provide analyses and baseline data to support decision-making in relation to the potential future impacts of major commodity developments on biodiversity in short-term and long-term planning in the Lake Victoria Basin”.

This report aims to be a two-fold source of information for national and regional stakeholders who influence agricultural and conservation policy and planning in the Lake Victoria Basin. Such stakeholders may include governments, the relevant regional authorities, as well as civil society or researchers. It presents and applies an analytical framework to assess and visualise likely future impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functions under different socio-economic futures for East Africa and discusses implications for policy. The document does not aim to provide specific policy recommendations for agricultural development in the Lake Victoria Basin. Rather, it aims to provide plausible future contexts within which policy balancing agriculture development and conservation needs to operate. A companion document sets out guidance on how spatially explicit scenario analysis can be used to support development of sustainable agricultural policy.