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The land-sharing side of the equation in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
Issue
Agriculture is the single largest human activity in terms of land use and has been deemed the number one driver of accelerated biodiversity losses due to its sheer scale. As recent COPs continue to strongly focus on land-sparing, we must not neglect to look inside the global agrifood system’s current processes and practices and their impact on the species that share those food production landscapes.
Background
More than one-third of the earth’s terrestrial surface and nearly 44% of all habitable land (approx. one-third cropland, two-thirds grazing land) is farmed (FAO 2023). By area, this is by far the largest human impact on terrestrial landscapes. To address biodiversity conservation and restoration meaningfully, we need to address what happens within those landscapes.
Green parties’ advocacy on biodiversity has been strongly grounded in “land sparing,” the principle of segregating land for nature conservation from land with other uses, including food production. In practice, this means a focus on expanding protected areas and restoring degraded natural ecosystems.
However, the principle of “land sharing” is equally important and complementary. Protecting crop varieties, livestock breeds, pollinators, insect predators, microorganisms in the soil, and other living organisms present in agroecosystems is essential to an effective and efficient approach to global biodiversity. A wealth of evidence shows that sustainable utilization of the biological resource base within working landscapes can in many cases have more impact than rigid protections.
Challenges
The focus on land sparing over the last two decades has served to justify agricultural intensification. The argument, advanced by many developed countries and multinational agri-business lobbies, is that intensification allows us to produce more food in a given area, hence we would need less area for production and can devote more to conservation. As a result, public policies to protect land for nature continue to coexist with policies that incentivize large areas devoted to intensive, export-oriented, low-biodiversity crop and livestock production.
“Sustainable” intensification
When it became evident that many of our intensification practices were contributing to soil degradation, pollution, vulnerability to pests and diseases, etc., the narrative evolved to “sustainable intensification”, a blanket term that can mean different things.
Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) Targets 7 and 10
Although the GBF is a big step in the right direction, COP 15 negotiations resulted in significant rewording of the draft framework that ultimately weakened the document in some areas related to agriculture.
For example:
Target 7 on reducing pollution risks adopted language on reducing overall risk from pesticides and agrochemicals by half, a target much more difficult to measure than the original draft language on reducing actual use by half.
Target 10, on ensuring that areas under agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries, and forestry are managed sustainably, included added language on sustainable intensification, a term often used to justify the adoption of high input, high-tech practices in industrial monoculture systems that are low in biodiversity.
The assumption that high-intensity, large-scale commercial agriculture is more efficient and productive and hence will spare more area for biodiversity conservation is not necessarily true. The body of scientific evidence shows that, as with natural ecosystems, the most productive agroecosystems are the most diverse. However, these highly productive, highly diverse agricultural systems are more complex and rarely a good fit with the model of production and the types of technologies (high input, automation, etc.) that countries continue to incentivize through public policy.
Soil biodiversity
The Draft Decision on biodiversity and agriculture submitted by Working Group 2 to COP 15 focused on addressing soil biodiversity, an area where new knowledge is exploding and many technological and policy opportunities exist. This is important because microbiological biodiversity in agricultural soils plays a role in increasing carbon storage, improving water and nutrient cycling, and climate resilience in the face of droughts and floods, among other benefits. Management practices that support soil biodiversity are a good example of applying the concept of land-sharing.
Conclusion
Efforts to stop or reverse global biodiversity losses must include protecting and improving biodiversity inside agricultural systems as well as outside. The GBF includes both land-sparing and land-sharing approaches and targets. Global Greens believe that without action in both areas, the GBF will not succeed, The right combination of specific targets and measures is region and context-dependent. A holistic combination of both approaches is required to sustain and optimize agricultural productivity while achieving conservation goals.