Silvio J. Crespin,  Saloni Bhatia and Tolera S. Jiren

Frontiers in Conservation Science | 17 July, 2023

Nature’s demise is a global crisis that jeopardizes food security and human well-being. Due to human activities, close to a million plant and animal species face extinction within the ensuing decades (IUCN, 2022). However, November 15th, 2022 is touted as the day our species reached 8 billion people on Earth (United Nations, 2022). Although food production is sufficient to feed everyone, the distribution of nature’s contributions to people is unequal and unfair (IPBES, 2019). This inequality puts pressure on farmers to increase food production, which in turn drives biodiversity loss by having altered 75% of the global land area (IPBES, 2019). The erosion of biodiversity reduces the resilience of agricultural systems to climate change, plagues and diseases, and undermines the diversity and quality of human diets.