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Given declines in biodiversity and ecosystem services, funding to support conservation must be invested effectively. However, funds for conservation often come with geographic restrictions on where they can be spent. We introduce a method to demonstrate to supporters of conservation how much more could be achieved if they were to allow greater flexibility over conservation funding. Specifically, we calculated conservation exchange rates that summarized gains in conservation outcomes available if funding originating in one location could be invested elsewhere. We illustrate our approach by considering nongovernmental organization funding and major federal programs within the US and a range of conservation objectives focused on biodiversity and ecosystem services. We show that large improvements in biodiversity and ecosystem service provision are available if geographic constraints on conservation funding were loosened. Finally, we demonstrate how conservation exchange rates can be used to spotlight promising opportunities for relaxing geographic funding restrictions. 

Agriculture’s global environmental impacts are widely expected to continue expanding, driven by population and economic growth and dietary changes. This Review highlights climate change as an additional amplifier of agriculture’s environmental impacts, by reducing agricultural productivity, reducing the efficacy of agrochemicals, increasing soil erosion, accelerating the growth and expanding the range of crop diseases and pests, and increasing land clearing. We identify multiple pathways through which climate change intensifies agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, creating a potentially powerful climate change–reinforcing feedback loop. The challenges raised by climate change underscore the urgent need to transition to sustainable, climate-resilient agricultural systems. This requires investments that both accelerate adoption of proven solutions that provide multiple benefits, and that discover and scale new beneficial processes and food products.