The economic costs of biodiversity loss at the crop level is a critical issue that warrants immediate attention.
Biodiversity plays a fundamental role in maintaining ecosystem stability, enhancing agricultural productivity, and ensuring food security. When biodiversity is compromised, the resilience of ecosystems diminishes, leading to a decrease in crop productivity, and an increased vulnerability to climate change, pests and diseases in the agriculture of the region. These consequences impact local and global economies by compromising crop availability, price stability, and local livelihoods.
Coconuts, a vital crop for many tropical regions, exemplifies the far-reaching impacts of biodiversity loss on specific supply chains. The coconut industry supports millions of smallholder farmers and contributes significantly to the economics of countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, and India. However, a monoculture approach to coconut agriculture has led to a decline in genetic diversity of the crop, and made coconut yields vulnerable - disrupting supply chains and global markets.
Recognizing the economic impacts of this biodiversity loss in the coconut supply chain is crucial to ensure global investment in biodiversity conservation and the diversification of cropping systems. These investments would not only help mitigate the economic risks to local and global supply chains, but would sustainably stabilize the coconut industry, enabling farmers to continue to nourish their communities and economics with this powerful crop.
CSF is working with The Crop Trust to identify the key stakeholders involved in the coconut crop industry to determine how best to support the sustainability and biodiversity of the global coconut supply chain in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Côte D'Ivoire.