(P02-016-23) Food System Biodiversity: Pathways From Ecosystems To Harvest, Consumption, and Sale

Objectives: Global biodiversity’s rapid decline makes understanding how biodiversity supports human well-being urgent, especially in geographies where people are strongly reliant on natural resources for their food and income. Yet the extent to which people’s use of biodiversity reflects broader patterns of available biodiversity in ecosystems is often assumed but largely unknown. To examine how the biodiversity in ecosystems is used, we analyze 1) how biodiversity filters from ecosystems to household harvest, consumption, and sale, as well as how 2) species traits and 3) household characteristics shape these relationships.

Methods: We used a unique, integrated ecological (40 sites, quarterly data collection) and household survey dataset (n=414, every 2 months data collection) with data collected over 3 years from rice field fisheries surrounding Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap, one of the most productive and diverse freshwater systems on Earth.

Results: We find that household catch and consumption biodiversity strongly reflected broader ecosystem biodiversity. On average, 30-32% of biodiversity present in the ecosystem is consumed by households, while only 5-6% is sold. Larger, less nutritious, and more common species were disproportionally represented in portfolios of sold species compared to consumed ones. Poorer households consumed more biodiversity; for every 1-unit increase on a household amenities index, households consumed about 1.5 fewer species. Further, patterns of households use of biodiversity were remarkably consistent despite wide variation in household characteristics, such as fishing effort, assets, and distance to nearest markets.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that ongoing biodiversity change could have critical effects on how people use and derive benefits from ecosystems. Shifts in available biodiversity may particularly impact the poorest households, which may be most reliant on biodiversity in their diets.

Funding Sources: Conservation, Food and Health Foundation and National Geographic Explorer Grant (to KJF) and Cornell Presidential Postdoc (to SH)