What would it take to bring rural biodiversity back?

A field can be green, productive and almost entirely devoted to a single crop. From a distance, it may look like a healthy piece of countryside. Look closer, though, and other questions emerge. What grows along its edges? Where can insects find food? Does a ditch or hedgerow connect it to somewhere wildlife can shelter?

Biodiversity is the variety of life in a landscape, from soil organisms and plants to insects and birds. Together, they help keep soils healthy, pollinate crops and maintain water quality. When that variety declines, the natural processes we depend on can weaken too.

The pressures are substantial. IPBES’s 2019 global assessment estimated that around one million animal and plant species were threatened with extinction. Changes in land use, exploitation, pollution, climate change and invasive species are driving nature’s decline.

In rural areas, those pressures meet everyday decisions about how land is farmed, water is managed and livelihoods are sustained. They also create opportunities to do things differently.

The 2022 Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework set a global ambition to effectively conserve and manage at least 30% of land and inland waters, and of marine and coastal areas, by 2030. Its other targets include ecosystem restoration, reduced pollution and biodiversity-friendly agriculture. For the Netherlands, that means looking beyond nature reserves to the fields, grasslands and waterways connecting them.

Jasper van Ruijven, a WUR ecologist studying plant diversity and ecosystem functioning, points to the importance of variety and connectivity. Even a field managed for biodiversity needs links to the surrounding landscape. Smaller features, such as vegetation along ditches and roads, can contribute.

Natascha Zwaal, project manager at WWF Nederland, sees a wider task: bringing together the people whose decisions shape those places. She points to Dutch initiatives that connect nature recovery with water management and farming. Alongside WUR’s agricultural research, they offer three useful examples.

More diversity within the field

WUR researchers have been investigating strip cropping: growing different crops in neighbouring strips within a field. Their research has shown opportunities to support biodiversity, help natural enemies find crop pests and slow the spread of diseases such as potato blight, while maintaining yields comparable to monocultures in the trials described.

Rewarding nature-friendly farming

The Biodiversity Monitor, developed by WWF, FrieslandCampina and Rabobank, tackles another obstacle: making environmental performance relevant to a farm’s income. Natascha highlights it as an example of collaboration between conservation, farming and business.

FrieslandCampina uses indicators including the farm nitrogen balance and nature and landscape management to determine biodiversity-related payments through its Foqus planet programme. That demonstrates a way to link measurement with financial incentives, although payments and indicator scores alone do not establish how much wildlife has recovered.

Giving rivers room

Farmland and rivers are part of the same landscape, and the way we manage water affects both agriculture and wildlife habitats. WWF’s Living Rivers vision, launched in 1992, helped make the case for giving Dutch rivers more space. Instead of relying solely on higher dykes, measures such as creating side channels and restoring floodplains allow rivers to carry more water during high flows while creating habitats for wildlife.

A study of 15 years of Dutch river restoration recorded biodiversity increases in 137 of 179 floodplain sections. Combining nature recovery with flood protection can therefore benefit the wider rural landscape, although changes to land use need to be planned with farmers and other local residents.

None of these changes happens on an empty landscape. Someone works the field, manages the grassland or lives beside the river. “Farmers may want to change, but simply don’t have the money to do it,” says Natascha.

Her point reaches beyond willingness. Finance, the price paid for produce and government policy influence whether another way of farming is viable. A farmer cannot carry the costs of a wider transition alone.

Wildlife recovery brings its own tensions. During research in Cameroon, Natascha encountered elephants capable of destroying a farmer’s entire crop in one night. An animal’s return can mean hope for conservationists and a devastating loss for someone depending on the harvest.

The return of wolves to the Netherlands raises a related question about protecting wildlife alongside livestock and livelihoods. “If you help restore nature and biodiversity, you have to take into account the interests of local people,” she says.

Compensation can help, but it cannot resolve every concern. Listening and involving people in decisions matter too. That is why, Natascha argues, conservation needs anthropologists, psychologists and other social scientists alongside ecologists.

These challenges leave room for contributions from many disciplines: understanding species, designing monitoring tools, developing viable business models or exploring how people adopt new practices.

The ReWild the Future Challenge, organised by WUR Student Challenges, invites students worldwide to develop practical solutions for rural biodiversity. Its themes span biodiversity monitoring, nature-positive practices and rewilding or habitat connectivity. Jasper encourages students to think ambitiously about how landscapes could be organised, then work out what their ideas require in a particular place. 

A few principles can help:

• Understand the place. Learn about its soils, water, species and people.
• Think beyond the boundary. Consider connections to neighbouring habitats and land uses.
• Include livelihoods early. Ask who would use, maintain and pay for the solution.
• Define the evidence. Distinguish what a prototype can show from outcomes needing longer monitoring.
• Find collaborators. Combine ecological expertise with local knowledge and other disciplines.

Mentoring from academia, business and NGOs, together with workshops, helps teams develop proposals, prototypes and business models. Participants gain experience of international teamwork and of testing whether an idea is ecologically sound and practical to use.

No student team will reverse biodiversity loss on its own. But an idea tested today could influence how a field is managed, how a habitat is restored or how a community works with nature tomorrow. That is a future worth making room for.