This report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) focuses on the interactions, synergies, and tradeoffs between agriculture and nature.

In this flagship report, IUCN explores the positive and negative relationships between agriculture and nature conservation and mobilises new modelling approaches to examine both imperatives within a range of realistic policies.

The second part of the report presents data on a set of indicators to assess national performance in environmental sustainability.

Key messages:

1. Sustainability of agriculture requires reconciling conflicts with living nature, strategically protecting and restoring it without undermining food security, economic, or climate goals.

• Recognise sustainability of agriculture as a critical need for living nature. More than 45% of the global need and opportunity to reduce species extinction risk rests with how agriculture is implemented, and it is similarly important for the future of biodiversity at the levels of genetic diversity and ecosystems.

• Safeguard places and species which cannot persist with agriculture. It is essential that local conservation effort be selective, in focusing strategically on safeguarding those places and species which cannot persist with agriculture.

• Harness opportunities to protect and restore nature and climate strategically without undermining food security or economic output. Considerable gains in conservation and restoration of biodiversity can be achieved across the globe, with commensurate co-benefits for climate change mitigation, without undermining food security or economic output, including through Nature-based Solutions (NbS).

2. Few one-size-fits-all blanket prescriptions will reconcile agricultural production with biodiversity conservation.

• Avoid blanket prescriptions. One-size-fits-all policies, such as targets for the percentage of land to be covered by protected areas or restoration, can drive net negative outcomes for nature. The same is true for agricultural practices including sustainable intensification and organic production that may not be advantageous overall despite local biodiversity-gains.

• Maintain ecosystem services for agriculture. The socio-economic value of maintaining the natural state of climate, soil, water, pollination, and pest control services that agriculture needs is typically cheaper and more effective than the provision of such benefits by people.

• Avoid Jevons Paradox. Land sparing approaches can be undermined if increases in production per unit area in turn drive increases in area in production (Jevons Paradox). Strengthening policy interventions are essential to mitigate this challenge, including land use planning and certification.

3. Transition towards sustainable agriculture involves ecological, economic, environmental, and social trade-offs that must be recognised and managed.

• Be alert to trade-offs. While in some cases, land sharing approaches, such as agroecology, organic production, regenerative farming, and reduced tillage may offer the best pathways towards sustainability, if they drive increases in imports or accelerated conversion of natural ecosystems elsewhere to compensate for reduced local production, such approaches may in fact result in net negative impacts for both biodiversity and people.

• Recognise the need for transitioning policies and incorporating conservation into strategic plans across different government agencies and economic sectors. This calls for transitional finance as interim support from governments to incentivise the adoption of sustainable practices and ease the transition for farmers.

• Ensure scalable metrics, indicators, and monitoring frameworks. They should be applicable across different sectors and institutional contexts, supporting cross- sectoral dialogue by providing a level playing field for assessment of positive and negative impacts. The Species Threat Abatement and Restoration metric meets these criteria.

4. Align agricultural and economic policies with conservation of living nature offers key opportunities to advancing sustainability.

• Reform agricultural support harmful to biodiversity.  With less than 5% of agricultural support implemented through ‘green subsidies’, agricultural support reform is essential to supporting transition to sustainable agriculture, as agreed in the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and its Target 18 calling for identifying and eliminating or repurposing US$ 500 billion of annual support by 2030.

• Assess and internalise the full cost of agricultural production, including externalities. The Ecosystem Accounting framework developed under the UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounts provides a powerful starting point.

• Integrate agricultural sustainability into trade and other international agreements.

5. Reform food policy can greatly advance conservation.

• Reduce food loss and waste. Food waste is one of the few unambiguous ‘win-wins’ policies for both agriculture and conservation.

• Incentivise positive dietary change. Incentivising dietary change towards reduced meat is another policy with few overall downsides as a pathway towards sustainability.

• Balance local food systems with judicious imports. Focusing on the production and consumption of plants and animals in each region or country typically stands to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport, reduce risks from invasive alien species, support conservation of agrobiodiversity and facilitate adaptation in the face of climate change. However, it has downsides, for example if it requires more agricultural land than do cosmopolitan crops with high productivity per unit area, thereby compromising national food security. These costs need to be mitigated by judicious trade policies.