Creating opportunities for coexistence to overcome the food–biodiversity challenge

Silvio J Crespin, Dario Moreira-Arce

Coexistence with biodiversity in agricultural landscapes is a global vision by 2050. However, the co-occurrence of wildlife and human food production often results in conflicts which require resolution. Therefore, agroecological landscapes that emerge when sharing land ultimately require achieving human-nature coexistence. We conceptualize human-nature coexistence as an n-dimensional space located in the intersection of multiple components of food security and biodiversity each acting as a dimensional axis and coalesce them into a single framework. Here, we expand upon the concept of coexistence parameters to introduce the concept of opportunities for coexistence to explain how different combinations of parameters can meet the needs of both food security and biodiversity conservation in different agroecological landscapes. Establishing this framework in an ‘Agroecological Systems Model of Coexistence’ provides further insight into understanding human-nature coexistence as a system state unique to every landscape and serves as a tool to conceptualize components as explanatory factors of such a state to inform policy and management when dealing with the food-biodiversity challenge at the local level.