Policy recommendations and tradeoffs for biodiversity conservation in agriculture

The Intergovernment Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) 2019 Global Assessment identified land-use change as the largest driver of biodiversity loss (IPBES, 2019). Agriculture is the largest contributor of land-use change, exemplified by large-scale agro-industrial expansion. However, not all types of agricultural production are equally harmful for biodiversity. For example, practices such as agroecology are demonstrating that it is possible to integrate agricultural production with biodiversity conservation (EstradaCarmona et al., 2022). Therefore, policy interventions aimed at the agricultural sector to incentivize biodiversity conservation are manifold. Policies might reform underlying relations of production (e.g., land tenure), compensate supply chain actors to maintain ecological services, or regulate land-use. Those examples, and their tradeoffs, are also not mutually exclusive.