Future projections of biodiversity and ecosystem services in Europe

Our results show that (1) climate and land use change will continue to pose significant threats to biodiversity and some ecosystem services, even in the most optimistic scenario; (2) none of the four scenarios achieved overall preservation of BES in Europe; and (3) targeted policies (e.g. on climate change, biodiversity conservation and sustainable land management) and behavioural change (e.g. reducing meat consumption, water-saving behaviour) reduced the magnitude of BES loss. These findings stress the necessity of more ambitious policies and actions if BES in Europe are to be safeguarded. We further found that the multi-modelling approach was critical to account for complementary BES dimensions and highlighted different sources of uncertainties (e.g. related to land use allocation, driving forces behind BES changes, trade assumptions), which facilitated nuanced and contextualised insights with respect to possible BES futures.