Drivers and commodity impacts on biodiversity in agrifood trade, and landscape typologies TC4BE Deliverable D4.1

The Transformative Change for Biodiversity and Equity (TCforBE) project (2022 – 2026) conducts transdisciplinary research to co-generate transformative change pathways in the context of telecoupled agrifood systems. It engages diverse stakeholders and explores plural perspectives within the EU and partner countries of Cameroon, Colombia, and Kenya, including EU and national policymakers, Indigenous Peoples and local communities. The project aims to strengthen stakeholder capacity on transformative change pathways leading to enhanced biodiversity and equity outcomes. Work package (WP) 4 provides an analysis of producer country transformative governance pathways.In this first deliverable of work package 4, we present the results of that analysis for three biodiversity-rich countries in the global South - Cameroon, Colombia, and Kenya - that are linked through trade, aid and other policies to the European Union, its companies, and its consumers. This report presents a descriptive analysis of land use change and commodity expansion during the 2010-2020 period for the main agricultural crops traded in those countries, together with a spatially explicit typology of landscape patterns and processes, utilizing geospatial open-source datasets, long-term land use Earth Observation data, and (sub)national datasets, alongside a spatially explicit typology of landscape patterns and processes. Biodiversity risks associated with these telecoupled commodities are also assessed by analysing the relationship between the change in crop area within relevant spatial or administrative unit in each country every five years with the change in each of the biodiversity indicators. An overview is provided of sustainable landscape initiatives and the discourses on biodiversity and agriculture in each country.Based on these results, the team will develop the subsequent deliverables of WP4, analysing the role of different policy interventions on fostering agricultural growth (Deliverable 4.2) to identify possible areas for policy interventions that could be discussed with policy makers and interested parties to foster the transition towards more sustainable land uses and trade policies, and in Deliverable 5.4 on sustainable landscape initiatives.