On the Relation between Monocultures and Ecosystem Services in the Global South: A Review

The countries of the global south are characterized by high levels of biodiversity. In addition, these countries have suffered -and will suffer- even more ecological pressures due to agricultural production, mainly monocultures. When considering areas of high biodiversity with highly intensive agricultural systems, the scientific literature highlights the role provided by Ecosystem Services (ES) both to monocultures and from monocultures to their contexts. In this sense, the objective of this paper is to provide a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to understand the relationship between monocultures and ES in the global south. Furthermore, in this research we provide a context analysis to broaden the understanding of the implications of monocultures in this region. We provide correlations between trends in monocultures harvested areas and forest cover in the countries identified through the SLR. Our SLR identified information from 15 countries and 11 monocultures. We found several negative correlations between harvested area and forest cover, mainly in megadiverse countries. In addition, we depicted trade-offs and synergies related to monocultures. We conclude that more research is needed in this regard, especially since there is great interest in monocultures for economic development in the global south, and this area will support world food production in the future.