This document aims to offer guidance on how scenarios describing different plausible future contexts can be used to map potential changes in land-use, biodiversity and ecosystem services and support sustainable agricultural policy development. Future land-use, as well as the highly uncertain future context within which land-use-related policy operates, has major impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems and the goods and services they provide to people. The guidance provides a step-by-step process on how to combine the use of scenarios and spatial mapping during policy review to strengthen policies in the face of future uncertainly. Further information on the use of scenarios with spatial mapping and other background material is included to help better understand the methods, and enable users to adapt the approach to different purposes.

The approach taken in this document has been applied to policy development and revision in three national contexts in Africa and regional contexts in Latin America and East Asia. A workflow for the approach is outlined in the sections below, and the steps can be adapted to different policy contexts and spatial scales. The approach comprises four stages:

• Stage 1. Define the objective of the policy review exercise that will benefit from the use of future scenarios and the spatial mapping of potential impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services
• Stage 2. Develop relevant scenarios and quantify the drivers of land-use change under each
• Stage 3. Map land-use change and its impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services under each scenario
• Stage 4. Revise policy using a scenario-guided approach integrating the impacts of land-use change on biodiversity and ecosystem services, and considering the drivers that underlie likely future pressures and (spatial) trade-offs as well as plausible future contexts for decision-making

This work was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. UNEP-WCMC worked with the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), Kassel University, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Albertine Rift Conservation Society (ARCOS) and other partners, to develop and quantify socio-economic scenarios for each region, model scenario-driven land-use change and engage with national stakeholders and policy processes.