EAT-Lancet diet reduces encroachment on high conservation priority sites

Abstract

The global biodiversity crisis demands urgent action, with global food production being one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss. Transitioning to less animal-intensive diets is a potential solution to decrease impacts. While it is established that diet change can lead to a decrease in agricultural land use, it remains unclear whether these reductions occur in areas at risk of biodiversity loss. This study uses a spatially-explicit land use indicator, based on co-existence of species richness and agriculture, to analyze the impact on four land use types, ranging from land use with low conservation priority to land use with very high conservation priority. We analyze the impact of a diet change scenario where fifty-four high-income countries adopt the EAT-Lancet diet. Our findings indicate a major decrease of about one third of conservation priority land use across all four land use types considered. This means that the diet change is indeed effective in lowering land use in high conservation priority sites. We recognize that even with the adoption of the EAT-Lancet diet there is a need for additional strategies to further decrease high conservation priority land use, with priority sourcing strategies being the most obvious next step.