Smaller human populations are neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for biodiversity conservation

Provisioning services decline for both people and Critically Endangered wildlife in a rainforest transformation landscape

“…This limitation also prevented us from being able to explore the effects of protected area status in‐depth, though we recommend further research to test the implications of our study's findings (that, as plots outside of protected areas are located near increasingly small human populations or at increasingly far distances from human settlements, plant availability metrics are expected to converge at values seen within protected areas). Further considering population size, however, we especially caution the attribution of population size alone as driving the decline in natural resources, as this metric can be frequently confounded with other, context‐specific factors (Hughes et al., 2023). For our study, village age and its distance to forest frontiers may be confounding factors, in addition to historic relocations and relationships associated with the creation of the park (Ormsby & Kaplin, 2005).…”

Co‐production of agroecological innovations to improve sustainability in South American fruit farms

“…Being immersed in the web of rules and requirements of the international market, farmers and traders tend to view the conservation of biodiversity as a way of meeting specific objectives of production according to acceptable standards, rather than seeing the intrinsic value of biodiversity. One possible consequence is that farmers are less inclined to make efforts to adopt new agroecological practices, if they could be replaced by something capable of performing better or cheaper (Hughes et al., 2023). In our context of intensive, exporting, South American fruit farms, so‐called ‘conventional’ practices based on synthetic inputs, are still the mainstream of industrial agriculture, while agroecology is based on knowledge and often requires more time and effort to implement (Maughan & Anderson, 2023; Sachet et al., 2021).…”

“…Here, we use 'agroecological practices', which we consider a relatively simple and widely recognised concept that keeps the focus on the farm scale. These practices are small steps towards a wider agroecological transition, recognised by Hughes et al (2023) as an important lever for action to minimise the impacts of agriculture on local biodiversity in both high-and lowincome countries while maintaining food security. Currently, there are major gaps in knowledge about how agroecological practices might work in the rapidly intensifying regions of the Global South, especially for fruit production (van der Meer et al, 2020).…”

“…Agriculture is widely accepted to be the main cause of biodiversity loss (Díaz et al., 2019) and one of the main causes of terrestrial greenhouse gas emissions (Tubiello et al., 2022). To minimise these contributions to problematic environmental change, global food systems require the transformation of agricultural practices to reduce the use of agrochemicals and minimise landscape impacts (Foley et al., 2011; Hughes et al., 2023; Meehan et al., 2011), while simultaneously closing yield gaps to avoid unnecessary and inefficient use of land (Leclère et al., 2020).…”

A biogeographic–macroecological perspective on the rising novelty of the biosphere in the Anthropocene

“…Importantly, it is now clear that anthropogenic change is having intended and unintended impacts at every biological scale in a global niche construction and manipulation process (Jaureguiberry et al., 2022; Meneganzin et al., 2020). For biodiversity, the growth of unsustainable human consumption (Hughes, Tougeron, Martin, Menga, Rosado, Villasante, Madgulkar, Gonçalves, Geneletti, et al., 2023) has resulted in a ‘sustainability paradox’ (Chaudhary, 2022), with the development of a global human niche juxtaposed against the growing climate and ecological crises. The structure of human populations, with growing demands and unequal resource distribution (Adams, 2012; Hughes, Tougeron, Martin, Menga, Rosado, Villasante, Madgulkar, Gonçalves, Diele‐Viegas, et al., 2023; Hughes, Tougeron, Martin, Menga, Rosado, Villasante, Madgulkar, Gonçalves, Geneletti, et al., 2023), is increasingly converting natural ecosystems to an altered state, either functional and fit for human development or into dysfunctional and degraded conditions, and not a state for ecological diversity or function (Watson et al., 2016).…”