Biodiversity conservation through food: Potential and challenges of nature-positive production

27 Jun 2023 --- Nature-positive foods could play an essential role in meeting the goals set at the UN Biodiversity Conference to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. However, there is no widely agreed definition. Measuring and encouraging nature-positive farming was one of the key themes at this year’s Sustainable Food Summit that Nutrition Insight attended.

Nature-positive food and agriculture are about addressing impacts, says Hafren Williams, senior technical specialist at Fauna & Flora International, an international wildlife conservation charity. 

“It’s about understanding biodiversity, ecosystems and species first of all in your landscapes and what your impact is going to do on that biodiversity and then addressing that impact.”

She notes that it is critical to avoid and minimize the impact on ecosystems and species and to promote biodiversity on the farm. 

“We should be talking about the major positive value chains as well, where those who have benefited the most from food production and sales can also support this transition.” 

Biodiversity is at the core of nature-positive food production, says Williams.Healthy ecosystems  
Williams explains that biodiversity is at the core of nature-positive visions. “Healthy, functioning ecosystems and the diversity and interconnectedness of species make up those ecosystems.”  

She highlights that measurement, management and target setting should focus on delivering those healthy ecosystems. 

“There’s always the risk that it’s not very clear what we mean with nature-positive,” cautions Jurjen de Waal, Netherlands senior director at Mighty Earth. 

He worries that companies might use the term but not commit to it systematically, which could give the impression that more is being done than the company can quantify. 

“I am glad to see that food companies are embracing these ideals to restore some of the damage done by the food system.” 

“But we need to be wary that we do it in a way that contributes to the big challenges that we see that are linked to the food system, whether climate change, biodiversity loss, or pollution.”

“More nature than there was before” 
In her presentation at the summit, Martine van Weelden, director at Capitals Coalition, shared a graph from the book The Economics of Biodiversity. This graph indicates that from 1992 to 2013, natural capital was depleted by 40%. 

She warns: “We are not successfully addressing the global challenges of nature loss, climate change and rising inequality because the design of our economic systems fails to recognize our impact and dependency on nature, people and society.”

“We’re currently on a trajectory where there’s less nature every day than yesterday or last week,” adds Willams. 

Nature-positive farming requires a system change and a focus on positive landscapes.Instead, she urges people to “think about more nature tomorrow than today and want even more nature next week. That’s the trajectory that we want to be on.”  

A report launched at the recent Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, called for food and agriculture to be at the heart of global climate dialogue and negotiations and to embrace nature-positive production. 

The report highlighted benefits to biodiversity and ecosystems with nature-positive solutions, such as agroecology and regenerative methods for food production. 

System change needed 
Nature-positive farming involves a system change, explains Williams. Governments should be involved in strategic planning to decide where to farm. 

“It is ultimately about how markets work, how consumerism works. But it’s also about the government’s role in making those difficult decisions.” 

She notes that restoring nature also requires addressing historical impacts, especially to reach a full recovery of ecosystems. 

This implies that, in many cases, farmers may be able to reach a nature-positive trajectory at the farm level but not in the whole landscape. She suggests actions are needed on the broader landscape restoration. 

De Waal adds that land use is a critical aspect of nature-positive farming. He suggests that if consumers transition to more plant-based diets, livestock can still find a place in nature-positive agriculture, with a more sustainable system and at “a much smaller scale that we’re seeing right now.”

He explains that this transition can save the land that can be returned to nature. 

Van Weelden stresses that companies need to implement natural capital accounting properly. “You can’t just pick one indicator. It’s about measuring how the system works and how natural capital and ecosystem services interlink.”

Companies can use the Science-Based Targets for Nature to assess and prioritize their environmental impacts.How do you measure biodiversity? 
One of the challenges in nature-positive food production is how to measure biodiversity. Williams notes there are concerns about greenwashing since it is unclear what the impacts are at individual sites. The outcomes for biodiversity include “ecosystem health and condition and species populations.” 

“There are metrics out there which can take the complexity on the ground and turn that into a unified metric, which is comparable, easy to interpret and understand across different sites.”

“In the past, people have been stumped by the idea of trying to measure biodiversity. It does help to simplify, but it would be more of a range of metrics rather than one metric that will tell the whole story.”

She mentions that the EU Align Project has published recommendations to clarify what elements of biodiversity to measure and how to assess impacts and dependencies on biodiversity in a business context. 

Williams notes that the recently released Science-Based Targets for Nature align well with nature-positive food principles. 

These include integrated technical guidance that enables companies to assess and prioritize their environmental impacts and aims to enhance positive outcomes for nature and people across their operations and supply chains. 

Regenerative agriculture 
Organic farming, regenerative agriculture and agroecology are examples of farming methods that can positively impact nature, Amarjit Sahota, director of Ecovia Intelligence, previously told Nutrition Insight. 

Philippe Birker, the co-founder of Climate Farmers, an organization that aims to scale regenerative agriculture, explained in his presentation that the agriculture practice holds the potential to build the resilience of farms to grow a good average harvest of high-quality crops at lower water, fertilizer and pesticide input costs. 

He notes that regenerative agriculture practices can capture carbon, build biodiversity, reverse erosion and, through that, increase farm productivity. 

One challenge in regenerative agriculture is reaching “essential infrastructure for scaling.” Birker explains this requires building knowledge among farmers and industry to shift the mindset toward regeneration, assess the potential of regeneration and implement practices in specific contexts to reach that potential. 

In addition, farmers need adequate financing instruments for their contributions that allow monitoring of regeneration aspects and include payments from society, such as subsidies, for improved ecosystem services. 

By Jolanda van Hal