Protecting biodiversity with people and for people
Biodiversity conservation is destined to fail unless the rights and needs of people enter the equation. While the necessity to protect native habitat is undeniable, the provision of food, water, shelter, and energy to humans often implies the sacrifice of large areas of native habitat. How can we halt this habitat loss to sustain biodiversity, while at the same time supporting the needs of an increasing global human population?
Some changes will positively affect biodiversity by increasing the total area of habitat reserved for nature, including top-down (e.g., market regulations and policies) and bottom-up (e.g., efforts to reduce waste and shift to plant-based food consumption) mechanisms. These are important societal changes that we hope will occur rapidly as we transition to a biodiversity-friendly future. But equally importantly, careful planning that does not affect the total area reserved to nature can optimize conservation investments. For instance, natural habitats can be maintained within agricultural landscapes to sustain several crucial services (e.g., pollination, pest control, and nutrient retention). In the Midwestern US, removing from crop production sub-field areas that are consistently under-yielding makes realistic conservation possible across millions of hectares (13). Avoiding growing food in such locations can reduce the total surface of land needed to feed humanity, while maintaining production. As a further example, restoration of small (≤ 0.16 ha) forest patches in oil palm plantations can enhance biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services without compromising yield (14). Thus, it is possible to reduce the area allocated to land used by people and increase land for nature, while also guaranteeing the services that people rely on.
Meanwhile, area-based conservation actions are inherently intertwined with socio-political dynamics and ethics (3), and require integrating biodiversity policy with other goals (e.g., the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals, particularly goals tied to biodiversity conservation such as “Zero hunger” and “Clean water and sanitation”). For instance, heterogeneous landscape mosaics where nature and people have coexisted for thousands of years (e.g., Indigenous lands) typically bolster both the intrinsic and utilitarian values of nature (3). At the same time, actions to sustain wilderness are not always desirable for people. For instance, global conservation of large carnivores is complex because human-wildlife conflicts disproportionately affect people in the global South, who already incur disproportionately high costs for global biodiversity conservation. Such costs include regulations on land use. For example, the Brazilian Forest Code imposes a minimum of native habitat area to be retained on private lands, and riparian zones are legally protected both in Brazil and Malaysia. Thus, the burden of global biodiversity conservation is placed upon the global South countries that are experiencing the fastest population and economic growths, whereas countries in the global North did not incur comparable limitations during their development.
Consequently, consideration of aspects beyond – but dependent on – biodiversity, such as productivity and ecosystem services, must be central in the dialogue around how to implement area-based conservation efforts. This dialogue requires weighing different conservation, ethical, social, and economic priorities. It also requires confronting debates such as the land sharing vs. land sparing debate, and the debate over whether organic farming is the most effective approach for biodiversity-friendly agricultural landscapes (7, 8, 15). We stress that the principles we champion here must be central to the process of weighing these different priorities, because failing to halt biodiversity loss entails a real risk of societal collapse.