Reconciling food production and nature conservation is a challenge shared by all. This document stresses the need to maximize the contribution of protected areas to food security and poverty alleviation through soundlymanaged agriculture. Farmers and forest dwellers, including a large proportion of indigenous people, are the main inhabitants and users of protected areas, as well as lands connecting these areas. In fact, 30 percent of land is occupied by agriculture and pastures and another 30 percent of Earth surface is occupied by forests. Protected areas occupy today some 10 percent of Earth cover, in a landscape dominated by the agriculture sector. Even within certain protected area categories, much land is used for agriculture (i.e. 30 percent of categories V and VI). More importantly, connecting areas between protected areas run through croplands, pastures and forests - which globally occupy over 60 percent of earth surface. Despite this high interdependence, community approaches to protected area management touch on the periphery of agricultural activities. Encouraging sustainable management of agriculture and forestry, within and around protected areas can reverse the trend of negative threats to protected areas, while allowing local residents to derive livelihoods from their lands. Creating a link between protected areas and poverty alleviation should not be limited to sharing conservation benefits in the form of visitors’ fees and the like but by investing in sustainable productive activities. The contribution of organic agriculture, sustainable forest management as well as agriculture-based ecotourism meets this challenge head-on by:

■ replacing polluting agricultural practices with approaches that can reverse the dramatic trends in biodiversity loss;

■ promoting market-based incentives that compensate farmers for their stewardship efforts, thus maintaining their economic viability;

■ thriving on community participation in land conservation.

Evidence suggests that organic agriculture and sustainable forest management not only produce commodities but build self-generating food systems and connectedness between protected areas. The widespread expansion of these approaches, along with their integration in landscape planning, would be a cost efficient policy option for biodiversity