Toward Nature-Positive Food Systems: Exploring Contextual and Societal Relevance in Diverse Landscapes

Abstract

Urgent action is needed to address biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and climate change, with food systems playing a vital role. Becoming nature-positive requires integrating societal needs with environmental sustainability. This study employs an indicator-based approach to foster discussion and develop a shared understanding of nature-positive food systems (NPFS) in two case studies. It reflects on the contextualization of NPFS and how an indicator-based approach contributes to moving toward NPFS. By fostering stakeholder dialogue, this approach created context-specific indicators focusing on local biodiversity, sustainable livelihoods, knowledge access, and human-nature connectedness. Discussions revealed visions of NPFS and identified barriers like inequity, prices, lack of knowledge and the need for people-positive outcomes within nature-positive thinking. This exploratory study proposes that the indicator-based approach can be broadly applied across various contexts to develop a shared understanding of NPFS, defining practices and setting priorities for measurement as initial steps toward NPFS action.