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BIODIVERSITY

We can have biodiversity and eat too

Nature Food volume 3, pages 310–311 (2022)Cite this article

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Major centres of global food export are not in places where biodiversity is greatest.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (https://sdgs.un.org/goals) are 17 sets of aspirations that include banishing hunger (SDG 2) and stopping biodiversity loss (SDG 15). Trade-offs between these seem inevitable. Consumption of grains increased threefold from 1960 to 2010 and animal consumption increased fourfold1, reflecting both population growth and per capita meat consumption. Agricultural intensification may partly explain such increases, but cropland and pasture are expanding, leaving less area for nature. Human actions now drive species to extinction at 1,000 times the rates at which species diversify2. As food production continues to expand, does biodiversity have a future?

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Fig. 1: Examples of crops in areas of different biodiversity.

imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Stuart Pimm

  2. Saving Nature, Durham, NC, USA

    Stuart Pimm

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  1. Stuart Pimm
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Correspondence to Stuart Pimm.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Pimm, S. We can have biodiversity and eat too. Nat Food 3, 310–311 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00503-0

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