Fig. 5: Ecological outcomes under ‘variable’ and ‘uniform’ set-aside approaches across all landscape configurations that lead to varying levels of the landscape cultivated.

a–g, Percentage of maximum possible net ecological outcomes (species occurrence, above-ground carbon storage and dung nutrient cycling) against the percentage of the landscape cultivated under ‘variable’ (orange line) and ‘uniform’ (blue line) approaches. Under the ‘uniform’ approach, all plantations in the landscape apply the same riparian reserve width and maximum slope for cultivation, whereas they can vary between plantations under the ‘variable’ approach. Grey shading shows 95% CI. The ‘most efficient landscapes’ show gains from the ‘variable’ approach that are obtained when set-aside configurations result in 77–87% of the landscape being cultivated (upper quartile of the difference between ‘uniform’ and ‘variable’ approaches), with the largest difference achieved when 85% of the landscape is cultivated (‘max. efficient’ black and white dot and green dashed vertical line). The regulations in Sabah, Malaysia (25° maximum slope for cultivation, 20 m riparian reserve width) and Indonesia (25° maximum slope for cultivation, 50 m riparian reserve width), which are our baseline for comparison, are shown with labelled dots. Curves use local polynomial regression for LOESS. a shows all ecological outcomes combined, and b–g show the curves per taxon/service/function. Animal silhouettes were reproduced from https://en.silhouette-ac.com/.