Increased export-oriented production is associated with regional losses in biodiversity and agricultural diversity in Brazil

Conserving biodiversity and ensuring sustainable and diverse food systems for growing populations are intimately related issues. This relationship is especially complex in countries like Brazil, an important producer and exporter country with highly biodiverse ecosystems. This study explores three decades of Brazilian regional food-biodiversity nexus to answer: what are the trends in biodiversity impact and agricultural diversity in the Brazilian mesoregions between 1990 and 2023? And what is the influence of international trade on those processes? We used the countryside Species-Area Relationship as a biodiversity impact indicator, the Shannon Diversity Index as a crop diversity indicator, and the proportion of cropland with at least 10% natural vegetation in a 1km2 window as a measure of landscape heterogeneity. Approximately half of the mesoregions present an increasing trend in biodiversity loss, with regions in the Amazon-Cerrado transition zone having the greatest rate of loss. There’s a significant decline in crop diversity across the mesoregions between 1990 and 2023. However, for 92% of the mesoregions, no significant linear trend was detected. Landscape heterogeneity within mesoregions significantly changed between 1990 and 2023, decreasing in 53% of them. There is a strong positive correlation between the magnitude of loss in landscape heterogeneity and the magnitude of biodiversity loss. Mesoregions with higher export shares had less crop diversity, less landscape heterogeneity and greater biodiversity impact than mesoregions with lower export shares. Finally, there is a weak negative correlation between the magnitudes of change in export shares and in crop diversity and landscape heterogeneity in the mesoregions, while it is a weak positive correlation for regional species loss: i.e. the greater the increase in the export share of the mesoregions, the greater the increase in their biodiversity impact and the decrease in their agricultural diversity. Our results suggest there is an overall trend towards more biodiversity impacts and less agricultural diversity in the Brazilian mesoregions, and that this trend is influenced by global market dynamics, with export-oriented regions showing stronger associations with losses of bio- and agricultural diversity