Published In

F1000Research

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-6-2013

Subjects

Food sovereignty, Biodiversity Conservation -- Latin America

Abstract

Strong feedback between global biodiversity loss and persistent, extreme rural poverty are major challenges in the face of concurrent food, energy, and environmental crises. This paper examines the role of industrial agricultural intensification and market integration as exogenous socio-ecological drivers of biodiversity loss and poverty traps in Latin America. We then analyze the potential of a food sovereignty framework, based on protecting the viability of a diverse agroecological matrix while supporting rural livelihoods and global food production. We review several successful examples of this approach, including ecological land reform in Brazil, agroforestry, milpa, and the uses of wild varieties in smallholder systems in Mexico and Central America. We highlight emergent research directions that will be necessary to assess the potential of the food sovereignty model to promote both biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction.

Rights

© 2013 Chappell MJ et al.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).

DOI

10.12688/f1000research.2-235.v1

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/12278

Share

COinS