Plain Language Summary: How does international agricultural trade depends on Nature?

By 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, and Catharina J.E. Schulp.

Read the full paper here.

Humans, production activities and businesses depend on Nature. However, we still cannot exactly quantify the extent of this dependency. In particular, we cannot yet grasp the dependency of international agricultural trade on nature. In this case there is a spatial disconnection between the consumers of agricultural products and the natural systems where these products where produced. For example, when cocoa is exported from Ghana to Germany, this trade flow to Germany is dependent on pollination in Ghana. Understanding and quantifying how much international agricultural trade depends on NCP will help to better manage the use of Nature and will help to assess risks and uncertainties both for exporting and importing countries.

Environmental policies increasingly recognize the importance of understanding how production activities depend on Nature. For example, the new Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework highlights the importance of businesses monitoring, assessing and disclosing their risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity along their value chains and providing information needed to promote sustainable consumption practices. At the European Union level, the European Biodiversity Strategy states that biodiversity provisions in all trade agreements should be fully implemented and enforced.

This study provides an overview of the scientific knowledge available so far on the international agricultural trade dependency on NCPs. While we found relevant examples across the different categories of Nature’s Contribution’s to People, a comprehensive understanding and quantification of the exact contribution of Nature to agricultural activities does not exist. We identify three methodological steps towards quantifying the contribution of Nature to agricultural trade: mapping underrepresented NCPs, linking NCPs to the traded product, and tracing trade flows. Finally, we outline the current status and future options on how to make the quantification of international agricultural trade dependencies on NCPs more actionable.