Eating Nature: Revealing the Ecological Cost of Food Trade through a Global Biodiversity-Risk Footprint

Overview This dataset provides country-level estimates of agriculture-driven potential biodiversity loss for the period 2005–2022. Potential biodiversity loss is measured as the Potentially Disappeared Fraction (PDF) of species. The Biodiversity Risk indicator is computed following the methodology described in: Lauro et al. (2026), Eating Nature: Revealing the Ecological Cost of Food Trade through a Global Biodiversity-Risk Footprint (forthcoming). The output dataset reports Biodiversity Risk bilateral trade flows for 157 commodities across 166 countries of production and 195 consumption countries. Repository contents The input and output/data generated by the study are archived here at Zenodo: 1. "Singh et al 2024 - Commodity-driven deforestation, carbon emissions & trade 2001-2022.xlsx": Deforestation Footprint data from: https://zenodo.org/records/10674962 Version 1.0.0 10.5281/zenodo.10674962 Feb 26, 20242. "commodities.xlsx": lis of commodities included in the analysis and the corresponding crop type. Crop type is used to merge the commodity data with the specific characterization factors from LC-IMPACT.3. "CFs_land_Use_average.xlsx": characterization factors for land stress (average values) from LC-IMPACT v1.3 (Verones et al., 2020).4. "BiodiversityRisk_data.xlsx": output file with consumption- and production-based Biodiversity Risk and country level The columns of the output dataset 'BiodiveristyRisk_data.xlsx' represent the following: Producer ISO/Consumer ISO: Three-letter country codes defined by ISO Producer country: Country of biodiversity loss, origin of the commodity Consumer country: Country of destination of the commodity Year: Year of the cause of potential biodiversity loss (deforestation), ranges from 2005-2022 Crop type: Type of crop associated to the commodity (Annual, Pasture, Permanent) Commodity: Name of commodity aligning with FAOSTAT Deforestation risk (ha): 5-year amortised deforestation estimates, hectares (from Singh and Persson, 2026) Deforestation emissions incl. peat drainage (MtCO2): 5-year amortised carbon emission estimates, including emissions from peatland drainage (from Singh and Persson, 2026) Deforestation risk (m2): 5-year amortised deforestation estimates, square meters (from Singh and Persson, 2026) OccupiedLand (m2): amortised deforestation estimates multiplied over 5 years, square meters CF trans avg: average characterization factors for land transformation (from LC-IMPACT) CF occ avg: average characterization factors for land occupation (from LC-IMPACT) BR_trans_avg: Biodiveristy Risk for land transformation BR_occ_avg: Biodiversity Risk for land occupation BR_total: total Biodiversity Risk associated to the commodity flow R script file used to generate the output dataset is archived at GitHub: https://github.com/stellalauro97-stack/Eating-Nature Contact If you have any questions, you can contact us at: Stella Lauro Email: [e-mail] Department of Economics and Statistics "Cognetti de Martiis", University of Turin Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin