Science
29 January 2016 Vol 351, Issue 6272
http://www.sciencemag.org/current.dtl

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EDITORIAL
Global science engagement
Geraldine Richmond
Summary
In rural Laos, more than 50% of newborns will be stunted by age 2 due to chronic malnourishment. Worldwide, 161 million children under the age of 5, many of them in Africa and Asia, suffered irreversible stunting as of 2013. The developed world is not immune. As recently as 2010, stunting affected 8 to 9% of babies enrolled in U.S. federal food-subsidy programs. Next week in Washington, DC, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS is the publisher of Science) will convene its annual meeting (11 to 15 February), where world leaders will discuss food security and other major challenges that lie ahead in both the science and international policy arenas.

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Policy Forum
Conservation Ecology
How can higher-yield farming help to spare nature?
Ben Phalan1,*, Rhys E. Green1,2, Lynn V. Dicks1, Graziela Dotta3, Claire Feniuk1, Anthony Lamb1, Bernardo B. N. Strassburg4,5, David R. Williams1, Erasmus K. H. J. zu Ermgassen1,
Andrew Balmford1
Summary
Expansion of land area used for agriculture is a leading cause of biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in the tropics. One potential way to reduce these impacts is to increase food production per unit area (yield) on existing farmland, so as to minimize farmland area and to spare land for habitat conservation or restoration. There is now widespread evidence that such a strategy could benefit a large proportion of wild species, provided that spared land is conserved as natural habitat (1). However, the scope for yield growth to spare land by lowering food prices and, hence, incentives for clearance (“passive” land sparing) can be undermined if lower prices stimulate demand and if higher yields raise profits, encouraging agricultural expansion and increasing the opportunity cost of conservation (2, 3). We offer a first description of four categories of “active” land-sparing mechanisms that could overcome these rebound effects by linking yield increases with habitat protection or restoration (table S1). The effectiveness, limitations, and potential for unintended consequences of these mechanisms have yet to be systematically tested, but in each case, we describe real-world interventions that illustrate how intentional links between yield increases and land sparing might be developed.