Land Sparing Verses Land Sharing Strategies on Biodiversity Conservation and Food Security (Research Paper Sample)

Land sparing verses land sharing strategies on biodiversity conservation and food security.
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Introduction
Strategies for conserving food security, reducing rural poverty and protecting natural resources plant in the agro-ecosystems focus generally on the expanding land area and enhancing diversity on the habitat for non-crop or within field crops by making changes within-field management practices. Unto this study, comparisons between the effects on richness of the species on land scape-scale are seen on strategies of land- sharing and land- sparing. Improvement of food security, conservation of the biodiversity and reduction of poverty in the rural set up are the major goals for sustainability in developing countries. Food security can be defined as the supply of culturally accepted foods and making them accessible whereas biodiversity means the variability within the organism and the ecosystem.
Land sparing as a strategy implies spatially segregation of conservation and production. It is more based on the fact that the most critical threat biodiversity faces is expansion of the agricultural area whereas land sharing implies that conservation and production should take place on the same land hence using biodiversity friendly methods. The argument about sparing or sharing the land also opens up the mind of the kind of environment we would be living on in the near future. Sharing will allow people of lower income to have access to the open spaces and the nature habitat as compared to sparing which requires the need for a higher density in the urban environments thereby leaving more land open for people and free.
Concept of sparing land for the conservation of biodiversity was brought up to help in characterizing policies at every zone that helped in setting aside agricultural production land for conservation of biodiversity. This idea was introduced after considering intensification of agriculture to better the environment since it majorly concentrated on production on the limited land in the rural areas. This was to help in reducing poverty among the rural since they would major in agricultural production. The other main idea as to why land-sparing was introduced was to promote agriculture practices with lower impacts on the ecosystems and increase biodiversity within the fields. Many studies showed that intensification and increased efficiency of agricultural production could help biodiversity conservation through land-sparing from production.
Land sparing strategized that conservation of biodiversity primarily occurred in protected areas and reserves by segregating production and conservation functions. Land-sparing requires solutions due to the negative influence arising from the intensively cultivated areas to the proximity of natural areas or global areas. The solutions are facilitated by management practices and technological practices that would ensure increasing yields hence securing food and reducing poverty within the rural. Sharing land strategies, on the other side considers a perspective landscape that ensures the agricultural lands provide species with resources and enables their movements between the natural habitats. Hence, it strategies that biodiversity conservation should be extended unto the reserves.
Land–sharing creates an agricultural systems opportunity by promoting biodiversity conservation within the farmland hence benefiting from the ecological process. The land sparing and land sharing is mutually un-exclusive thereby making those conserving biodiversities believe that reserves and off reserves combinations are needed for biodiversity conservation effectively. The current issue of sustainability is to identify the efficient trade-offs mainly. This agronomic and ecological knowledge is indispensable and logically existing. The sparing land and sharing of land are essentially economic because it mainly interests the allocation of scarce resources efficiently. The analysis of the strategies highlights the importance of the partial trade-offs.
In real sense the differences between land sparing and sharing contains limited value due to the existence in the land use patterns which are merely heterogeneous. Secondly, the agricultural landscapes seem to be more complex as systems making it to involve more stakeholders with various interests. The framework of sharing and sparing land ecologically it is justified but by its own, it does not account for complexity socially. Apart from the ecological factors the institution and social dimension needs more considerations in land and in the strategies of using land. This should be done if a sustainable goal of production and conservation of food harmonizing is needed to be reached. Lastly, mismatches may occur in understanding the preferences strategic between the stakeholders who make policy and the institutions stakeholders. Land-use policies should therefore ensure both the stakeholders participate during the design of the procedure and also during implementation of the approach to provide the mismatches are minimized.
Scientists, majorly those on the ecologist part, have come up with strategies to help minimize the trade-offs existing between agriculture and biodiversity. One of the best strategies they came up with is sparing of the land. They agreed that this strategy is the best since they discovered that it tries to segregate conservation and production to maximize yields as small as possible in areas, thereby sparing the land for natural habitat. Land sharing is another strategy that was discovered that it tries to segregate production and conservation on the same ground hence making farming kind of more possible to biodiversity.
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