FoodDiverse A03 - Impacts of agricultural diversification on biodiversity and human-nature relationships

Biodiversity loss impacts human health and wellbeing directly and indirectly. However, despite efforts of conservation, biodiversity decline continues due to various drivers such as unsustainable agricultural practices, resource demand, and land-use change. How to make agriculture more sustainable is a debated topic, and cropping system diversification has been one of the proposed strategies to reduce negative impacts of agriculture on biodiversity. Impacts at the field scale are likely influenced not only by diversification measures within fields but also by the broader landscape diversity. However, research at the field scale is often conducted in isolation from studies on biodiversity at the landscape scale and vice versa. Furthermore, while there is some knowledge around the broader benefits of crop diversification on biodiversity, there is a significant research gap on the potential impacts of agricultural diversification and associated biodiversity impacts on human-nature-relationships, including nature perception, values, and mental wellbeing. Moreover, insights from high-income countries cannot necessarily be transferred to low- and middle-income countries, as people’s preferences and living conditions differ. The main research question in this project is: How is agricultural diversification linked to biodiversity indicators at field and landscape scale, and how do these indicators connect to human-nature relationships? This will be addressed in Ghana and Germany.

This project is part of the larger Collaborative Research Center “Food System Diversification for Sustainable Nutrition (FoodDiverse)”. 

Methodology

To address the main research question and test the hypotheses, the project will combine existing datasets with new data collected in both study countries. These data will be collected on and around different fields and farms (e.g., field-scale non-crop biodiversity), for different households, and at the landscape level (e.g., landscape diversity).