The role of nature's contributions to people in sustaining international trade of agricultural products

Alexandra Marques*, Aletta Bonn, Antonio J. Castro, Abhishek Chaudhary, María R. Felipe-Lucia, Thomas Kastner, Thomas Koellner, Kira Lancker, Laura Lopez Hoffman, Carsten Meyer, Stephan Pfister, Gabriela Rabeschini, Louise Willemen, Catharina J.E. Schulp

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Nature's contributions to people (NCP) are essential for the production and trade of agricultural, forestry and fishery commodities. Often, there is a spatial disconnect between consumers and the natural systems where the commodities are produced. Traded agricultural products are therefore dependent on nature and NCP in their region of origin. The dependencies of agricultural products on NCP are, however, insufficiently recognised by consumers and are rarely considered in global environmental governance and trade policies along value chains. Here, we synthesise studies highlighting dependencies of agricultural products on NCP in their origin locations to identify opportunities and challenges in quantifying their contribution in sustaining trade flows. We suggest three methodological steps for quantifying NCP dependencies in international agricultural trade: spatial mapping of NCP supply and demand, linking NCP to agricultural trade flows, and tracing trade flows. Each methodological step requires further development and harmonisation to enable a complete accounting of how international agricultural trade depends on NCP. Given the lack of knowledge and data on how NCP support agricultural trade, social and environmental trade-offs of natural resource management are currently hard to quantify. Quantifying the role of NCP dependencies of traded agricultural products can support their sustainable management, contribute to supply chain accountability and serve as input to sustainable natural resource governance and foster responsibility and equity in supply chains. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)410-421
Number of pages12
JournalPeople and Nature
Volume6
Issue number2
Early online date17 Feb 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors. People and Nature published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.

Funding

This article is a joint effort of the working group ‘sTradES—Ecosystem services, biodiversity, and anthropogenic capital embedded in internationally traded goods’ and is the result of a workshop kindly supported by sDiv, the Synthesis Centre (sDiv) of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐ Jena‐Leipzig funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG FZT 118). CS was supported by the Horizon 2020 project CONSOLE (grant agreement 817949). This work does not necessarily reflect the view of the EU and in no way anticipates the Commission's future policy. CM acknowledges support from the Volkswagen Foundation via a Freigeist Fellowship (A118199) and from iDiv via its Senior Scientist programme (DFG FZT 118). AC acknowledges funding from the Initiation Grant of IIT Kanpur, India (Project Number 2018386). GR and TK acknowledge funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (grant number GS22 E1070‐0060/029). LLH recognises sabbatical fellowship support from iDiv German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐Jena‐Leipzig. SP was supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) in the Horizon 2020 project SUSTAIN (grant agreement 101060320). MFL contract was partially funded by the RYC2021‐032828‐I grant, financed by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union ‘NextGenerationEU’/PRTR.

FundersFunder number
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and DevelopmentGS22 E1070‐0060/029
Synthesis Centre
European Commission
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur2018386
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftFZT 118
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Volkswagen FoundationA118199
Volkswagen Foundation
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
Staatssekretariat für Bildung, Forschung und Innovation101060320
Staatssekretariat für Bildung, Forschung und Innovation
Horizon 2020817949
Horizon 2020
Agencia Estatal de Investigación
Deutsches Zentrum für integrative Biodiversitätsforschung Halle-Jena-Leipzig
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)

    Keywords

    • dependencies
    • ecosystem services
    • international agricultural trade
    • Nature's contributions to people (NCP)
    • supply chains
    • telecoupling

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