Key findings:

The Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land-use, and Energy (FABLE) Consortium, an international network of researchers, has released a position paper that highlights the need for a sustainable food and land use system transition to achieve global biodiversity targets.

The paper emphasizes that current food and land use system trajectories are leading to biodiversity loss and climate change. According to the authors, agricultural expansion, intensification of food production, and simplification of agricultural landscapes are major drivers of biodiversity loss.

The authors document that a shift towards more sustainable practices is necessary to reverse these negative impacts, and to achieve global sustainability targets, as illustrated in table 1 below. 

They demonstrate that three major transitions within food and land use systems are essential to progress on achieving global biodiversity targets:

1. Shifting diets and reducing food loss and waste.

The paper finds that currently about 50% of the world’s kilocalories are used for human food, 16% for feed, and 23% for biofuel and other non-food uses, while food loss and waste accounts for the remaining 14%.

Therefore, they reckon changing diets is a powerful lever to meet the Global Sustainability targets. In particular, they find that a reduction in per capita calorie consumption in countries that currently exhibit high levels is necessary, with a considerable decrease in consumption of animal products, saturated fats and sugar. Increased consumption of vegetables, legumes, fruits, and nuts are needed in almost all countries.

They also find that the Global Sustainability pathway implies a reduction in post-harvest food loss and waste of 1.8% per year between 2020 and 2050, with the largest share of reductions occurring in a few developed countries.

1. Increasing crop and livestock productivity

Under the Global Sustainability pathway, the authors find that a global average increase of 18% in cropland productivity and 35% in livestock productivity, are needed by 2050.

The findings suggest that agroecological approaches can provide a means for achieving productivity gains without compromising social and environmental outcomes.

The authors reckon currently neglected and under-utilized varieties will be vital to enable the transition to more nutritious and productive alternative crops

1. Land restoration and protection.

Existing agricultural and other human uses of land in protected areas and Other Effective Conservation Management (OECMs) zones should be managed in ways that conserve on and off-farm biodiversity, through plans that are co-designed with local and indigenous groups and that respect and respond to their knowledge and needs, while agricultural expansion should be avoided in these zones.

Policy Recommendations:

• Develop national roadmaps for achieving sustainable food and land use system transitions.
• Mobilize government inter-agency coordination taskforces to review and align food and land use system targets.
• Create public and private sector incentives to catalyze the desired food system transition.