Optimizing coordination and trade-offs between food security and biodiversity conservation goals

Balancing food security and biodiversity conservation—two often conflicting objectives—is essential for achieving global goals (e.g., SDG 2 and 15; GBF Targets 1, 3, and 10). While previous studies have explored global or national-level trade-offs, there is a lack of spatially explicit, scenario-based planning frameworks at regional scales to reconcile cropland expansion and biodiversity conservation. The study develops a multi-objective spatial planning framework to assess how future cropland expansion may be optimized to reduce biodiversity impacts while ensuring food security in the northwestern dry geo-eco region of China. Using a random forest model trained with environmental, socio-economic and trend variables to project cropland expansion from 2020 to 2030 and identify areas of spatial conflict with biodiversity priority regions. Results reveal intense conflicts in ecologically sensitive areas such as the Altai and Tianshan Mountains. Under a food-security-first scenario, expanding 300,000 km² of cropland would result in 167,978 km² of conflict areas and a 12.20% habitat loss rate. In contrast, a biodiversity-priority scenario achieves only 199,782 km² of cropland expansion, reducing habitat loss to 2.39%. A trade-off coordination scenario offers an optimized balance, enabling 300,000 km² of cropland expansion while protecting 30% of biodiversity priority areas and limiting habitat loss to 3.52%. This study highlights a novel framework for integrating food security and biodiversity conservation, offering spatially explicit strategies to support region-specific sustainable land-use planning.