Many land areas on our planet are degraded by the destructive impacts of climate change and unsustainable land use management practices. This resulted in soil nutrient depletion, severe droughts, desertification, loss of biodiversity, yield reductions, enhanced greenhouse gas emissions, etc. The resilience of ecosystems to withstand rapid environmental changes has been compromised.

Fortunately, there are ways to reverse the damage and revive the natural capital of a project area. Regenerative land-use projects can tackle the negative impacts of past unsustainable management practices, for instance via adoption of less frequent or zero tillage, the establishment of multi-species plantations instead of monocultures and the improvement of the soil organic carbon content by re-introducing herbs and cover crops. Sustainable agroforestry and silvo-pastoral systems combine several regenerative land-use management principles that lead to systemic improvements at the landscape and even larger scale levels.

With its expert knowledge and customizable analytical (GIS-based) tools, BioGrowth Development can estimate and optimize the impact of past and future management choices of customers in agricultural, forestry and nature land-use change projects. Multi-variate sensitivity and risk analysis is one of the methods that are applied by BioGrowth development for this purpose. By simulating the combined impact of simultaneously varying project parameters on plant growth, carbon sequestration and ecosystem services, the expected benefits and risks of an unlimited number of project scenarios can be tested (e.g. different locations, different combinations of plants, crops, trees and testing a range of management options). Apart from sustainability metrics, techno-economical metrics such as plantation establishment costs and expected returns from carbon credits may also be taken into account. Thus, the optimal project configuration offering the highest combined benefits and the lowest overall risk can be identified.