Advancing Sustainable Agriculture in High-Biodiversity Landscapes: India’s New Insights and Pathways

IUCN’s project “Accelerating the Global Transition to Sustainable Agriculture,” supported by the IKEA Foundation, aims to harmonize sustainable agriculture and ecological conservation. Through IUCN’s Common Ground Dialogues approach—designed to bridge perspectives across agriculture and conservation sectors—the initiative brings together farmers, forest managers, researchers, women’s groups, private sector actors, government departments, and policymakers to co-design solutions that harmonize agricultural production with biodiversity conservation.

India presents a complex interaction between food and agricultural systems and conservation, shaped by its vast ecological diversity, high population density, and deep dependence on land-based livelihoods. Agriculture remains the primary source of income for a large share of the population, requiring intensive use of land and water resources, while conservation efforts seek to protect forests, wildlife, and ecosystem services that are increasingly under pressure. This overlap often leads to competing priorities.

A New Evidence Base for India’s Agriculture–Biodiversity Nexus

IUCN India initiated a background study to understand agriculture in the vicinity of high biodiversity areas. The India-specific background study provides compelling insights into the evolving dynamics of agriculture and land-use change around some of India’s high biodiversity areas. Between 1995 and 2022, cropland area within 10 km of Protected Areas declined by about 5.7% on average, even as the population in these same areas increased by 28% from 2000 to 2020. This change in cropland area in the vicinity of high biodiversity areas is not particularly uniform. While cropland area within a 10 km buffer around Protected Areas such as Senchal, Bondla, and Sirohi showed significant cropland decline, landscapes near Mehao, Valley of Flowers, and Shendurney experienced cropland expansion of varying degrees. These divergent patterns align with the emphasis in the IUCN Programme 2026–2029 on understanding how drivers of biodiversity loss operate differently across sub-global scales. Local contexts and the distinct pressures within them shape land-use decisions, highlighting the need for tailored landscape-specific strategies rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.

These findings also reaffirm the Programme’s focus on overcoming fragmentation between agriculture, forestry, climate, and conservation sectors. The variability around Protected Areas demonstrates how land-use challenges occur at the interface of food production and biodiversity protection, an interface where coordinated governance, shared planning, and multi-sectoral cooperation are critical.

IUCN India

IUCN India organizing team at the Common Ground Dialogue

Catalysing Collaboration: A Step Toward Scaled Action

A central contribution of the IKEA Foundation–supported initiative lies in how it enables convergence across sectors that have traditionally worked in silos. By applying IUCN’s Common Ground Dialogues approach, the project creates the conditions for agriculture and conservation sectors to co-develop solutions that are both ecologically sound and economically viable.

To strengthen this collaborative foundation and translate the project’s vision into actionable pathways, a Common Ground Dialogue was convened in New Delhi on 20 August 2025. This Dialogue marked the beginning of a coordinated effort to align technical insights, institutional roles, and policy opportunities, ensuring that the initiative evolves into a robust, future-oriented action agenda for IUCN India and the wider IUCN Asia region.

Building on this momentum, two broad implications emerged: 

1. Empowering Communities and Strengthening Food Security
   The next phase of agricultural sustainability must be farmer-led, locally grounded, and institutionally supported to ensure ecological restoration, food security, and improved rural livelihoods move forward together. Strengthening communities through local institutions such as the Gram Sabhas (village assembly of all adult citizens in a village) and Mahila Sabhas (village-level meeting of women of Gram Sabha), as well as scaling up agroforestry and climate-adaptive practices, is essential for linking conservation to food security. These insights directly support IUCN’s 2026–2029 Programme priorities by strengthening governance, improving livelihoods, and reducing biodiversity loss.
2. Innovation, Finance, and Policy Realignment
   Redirecting incentives toward diversified, climate-smart, and regenerative agricultural systems can align economic rewards with ecological outcomes. Expanding eco-sensitive zones and integrating Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) can help embed biodiversity-friendly practices in high-biodiversity landscapes, contributing to global targets such as 30x30 and the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. There is a range of emerging solutions demonstrating how productivity and sustainability can reinforce each other, including:
   • Zero tillage and mulching practices that improve soil and water efficiency;
   • Climate-resilient rice varieties that reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
   • Weather-indexed insurance models that connect risk reduction with ecosystem outcomes; and
   • IoT-enabled irrigation systems that support precision farming.

These linkages show how public sector payments can be repurposed toward sustainable outcomes, echoing the Programme 2026–2029’s emphasis on aligning financial flows with biodiversity and climate resilience.

IUCN India

Participants at the Common Ground Dialogue (CGD)

A Determined Path Forward

Looking ahead, IUCN will continue to deepen its collaboration across conservation and food and agricultural systems actors, including governments, producers, companies, financial institutions, civil society, and academia to accelerate the shift toward sustainable agricultural landscapes. IUCN will also advance the Common Ground approach as a practical tool for multi-stakeholder alignment and will continue producing knowledge products, policy guidance, and technical tools that support various organizations in transitioning toward sustainable, resilient agricultural landscapes. Through these steps, IUCN aims to position its work in food and agricultural systems as a more integrated, scalable, and evidence-driven programme aligned with the ambitions of the Programme 2026–2029 and Vision 2045.