Mapping potential conflicts between global agriculture and terrestrial conservation

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 120, pp. e2208376120

Abstract

Demand for food products, often from international trade, has brought agricultural land use into direct competition with biodiversity. Where these potential conflicts occur and which consumers are responsible is poorly understood. By combining conservation priority (CP) maps with agricultural trade data, we estimate current potential conservation risk hotspots driven by 197 countries across 48 agricultural products. Globally, a third of agricultural production occurs in sites of high CP (CP > 0.75, max = 1.0). While cattle, maize, rice, and soybean pose the greatest threat to very high-CP sites, other low-conservation risk products (e.g., sugar beet, pearl millet, and sunflower) currently are less likely to be grown in sites of agriculture–conservation conflict. Our analysis suggests that a commodity can cause dissimilar conservation threats in different production regions. Accordingly, some of the conservation risks posed by different countries depend on their demand and sourcing patterns of agricultural commodities. Our spatial analyses identify potential hotspots of competition between agriculture and high-conservation value sites (i.e., 0.5° resolution, or ~367 to 3,077km 2 , grid cells containing both agriculture and high-biodiversity priority habitat), thereby providing additional information that could help prioritize conservation activities and safeguard biodiversity in individual countries and globally. A web-based GIS tool at https://agriculture.spatialfootprint.com/biodiversity/ systematically visualizes the results of our analyses.

Authors 10

1. Nguyen Tien Hoang

   Research Institute for Humanity and Nature

   Affiliation as printed

   Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto 603-8047, Japan

2. Oliver Taherzadeh Aachen Department of Industrial Ecology Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML)

   Leiden University · Research Institute for Humanity and Nature

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Industrial Ecology, Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, 2333 CC Leiden, the Netherlands

   Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto 603-8047, Japan

3. Haruka Ohashi

   Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute

   Affiliation as printed

   Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Forest Research and Management Organization, Tsukuba 305-8687, Japan

4. Yusuke Yonekura

   Yokohama National University

   Affiliation as printed

   Faculty of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University, Yokohama 240-8501, Japan

5. Shota Nishijima

   Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency

   Affiliation as printed

   Fisheries Resources Institute, Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency, Yokohama 220-6115, Japan

6. Masaki Yamabe

   Keio University · Keio University Shonan Fujisawa

   Affiliation as printed

   Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Fujisawa 252-0882, Japan

7. Tetsuya Matsui

   University of Tsukuba · Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute

   Affiliation as printed

   Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba 305-8572, Japan

   Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Forest Research and Management Organization, Tsukuba 305-8687, Japan

8. Hiroyuki Matsuda

   Yokohama National University

   Affiliation as printed

   Faculty of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University, Yokohama 240-8501, Japan

9. Daniel Dean Moran

   NILU

   Affiliation as printed

   The Climate and Environmental Research Institute NILU, 7013 Trondheim, Norway

10. Keiichiro Kanemoto

    Shinshu University · Tohoku University · Research Institute for Humanity and Nature

    Affiliation as printed

    Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8572, Japan

    Research Center for Social Systems, Shinshu University, Matsumoto 390-8621, Japan

    Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto 603-8047, Japan