Safeguarding Biodiversity through Food Choices

Food systems alone account for around 40% of global biodiversity loss, through land-use change and greenhouse gas emissions – making food the single largest lever we have to bend the curve of species loss.¹ Within that footprint, animal-sourced foods do outsized damage: high-resolution mapping of global agricultural supply chains revealed that animal-sourced foods drive 71% of the biodiversity loss and 59% of the carbon loss linked to food consumption farming, with bovine meat and milk alone accounting for 41% and 29%, respectively.²

While climate change is among the biggest challenges we need to address as a global society, it’s not the only one – we are also facing the sixth mass extinction in our planet’s history.³ And this time, the extinction event is being driven by human activity.

What we eat has a massive impact on biodiversity; agriculture currently uses half of the earth’s habitable land and has drastically changed the planet’s physical environment in the last few decades. Between 2000 and 2018 alone, agriculture was responsible for about 90% of global deforestation,⁴ destroying the habitat of countless species around the world.

The expansion of agricultural land, particularly for livestock production, has a direct impact on the habitats of all lifeforms on earth and is a primary driver of species extinction – from animals to plants, fungi, and other microorganisms. More than half of the species that are currently at risk of extinction are threatened by agriculture.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Nexus Assessment warns that ‘Food First’ scenarios, which prioritize unsustainable production and rising per-capita meat consumption, project severe biodiversity impacts from agricultural land conversion and pollution. It points to sustainable healthy diets – rich in legumes, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and nuts, with less red and processed meat – as key to protecting nature while delivering health, water, and climate co-benefits.⁶

Agriculture is a threat to more than half the species at risk of extinction⁷

*Threatened species include plants, animals, fungi, and other microorganisms. While agriculture is among the main threats, species are also threatened by other factors such as over-exploitation, pollution, energy, and mining. Based on data from IUCN.

The 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission update reinforces the case for this shift: a global move to healthy, sustainable diets could cut agricultural land use by around 7%, freeing land for biodiversity restoration, while preventing up to 15 million premature deaths a year and generating an estimated $5 trillion a year in economic benefits, against an investment of $200–500 billion.⁸

Food systems rely on biodiversity

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026 ranks biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse as the second most severe global risk over the next ten years – behind only extreme weather – even as it has slipped in short-term rankings amid competing crises.⁹

Our food systems – and thus our global food security – depend on biodiversity and its ecosystem services. These services include soil health and the recycling of nutrients, insect-assisted pollination, and natural pest control for the countless plant species we already eat, as well as for those that might be potential nutrient sources in the future.

An estimated $58 trillion of economic value generation, equivalent to more than half (55%) of global GDP, is moderately or highly dependent on nature, up from $44 trillion in 2020.¹⁰ In the 2020 baseline, the agriculture and food-and-beverage sectors alone represented nearly $4 trillion of this value and were among the most nature-dependent industries in the world.¹¹

A loss of biodiversity will therefore lead to vast losses for the global economy, and, because our food system depends on the very ecosystem services biodiversity provides, it will exacerbate food insecurity and economic instability around the world.

Yet the world continues to invest far more in harming these systems than in protecting them. The IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment, approved by more than 150 governments in February 2026, found that in 2023 global public and private financial flows with direct negative impacts on nature reached an estimated $7.3 trillion – including some $2.4 trillion in environmentally harmful public subsidies. By contrast, only around $220 billion was directed towards the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.¹²

This is a direct consequence of how we produce food. Peer-reviewed research mapping the biomass of life on Earth found that livestock account for around 60% of all mammal biomass, with humans making up another 36%, leaving wild mammals at just 4%. Farmed poultry alone account for roughly 70% of all bird biomass.¹³ In other words, our food choices have already reshaped the animal kingdom.

Ecosystem services for agriculture

Biodiversity in our food systems

While our food systems are highly dependent on the services provided by nature and biodiversity, they can also be major contributors to counteracting biodiversity loss and restoring the natural environment. The global food supply currently relies heavily on a limited number of staple foods, which has major implications for nutrition and food security. Although, historically, more than 6,000 plant species have been cultivated for food, less than 200 species currently make substantial contributions to global food production – and just nine plants account for two-thirds of total crop production.¹⁴

Biodiversity within agri-food systems can have multiple benefits for both biodiversity itself and human well-being. Food systems and diets around the world are diverse and often depend on foods available in both local regions and other parts of the world. To improve food security, a large diversity of plants is needed, since combining a wide variety of different (plant-based) foods can improve nutrient supply. A positive link has been shown between crop diversity and improved dietary diversity and reduced hidden hunger.¹⁵ (Hidden hunger is a form of malnutrition resulting from a lack of essential micronutrients in a person’s diet even though enough calories are being consumed.)

A small number of crop species provide the majority of our food

Figure adapted from IUCN and FAO.^{16 17}