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 language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 410-421 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | People and Nature |
Volume | 6 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 17 Feb 2024 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 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.
Funders | Funder number |
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German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research | |
German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development | GS22 E1070‐0060/029 |
Synthesis Centre | |
European Commission | |
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur | 2018386 |
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur | |
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft | FZT 118 |
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft | |
Volkswagen Foundation | A118199 |
Volkswagen Foundation | |
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación | |
Staatssekretariat für Bildung, Forschung und Innovation | 101060320 |
Staatssekretariat für Bildung, Forschung und Innovation | |
Horizon 2020 | 817949 |
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