Diverse values of nature for sustainability.

Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being1,2, addressing the global biodiversity crisis3 still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature's diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever4. Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature's values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)5 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals6, predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature7. Arguably, a 'values crisis' underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change8, pandemic emergence9 and socio-environmental injustices10. On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature's diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions7,11. Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures.

Correction: Socioeconomic, demographic and geographic determinants of food consumption in Mexico.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288235.].

How much of the Mexican agricultural supply is produced by small farms, and how?

The contribution of small farms to the global food supply is in debate due to lack of empirical evidence. In Mexico, small farms have been relatively important for national food supply due to an agrarian reform in the first half of the 20th century, but their role has been decreasing in the last decades. The aim of this study is to quantify how much small farms produce of the Mexican agricultural supply, and with which farming practices, using the 2019 National Agricultural Survey. The results show that small farms produce 19% of the national agricultural production with similar farming practices to those of medium and large farms. When considering imports and exports, small farms produce 15% of the national agricultural supply. The production of small farms consists mainly of cash crops (e.g. sugar cane, fruits & vegetables, animal products, fodder crops) and, to a lesser extent, staple crops such as maize and beans. The fact that small farms produce one fifth of the national production after decades of governmental support towards large farms suggests that they have resilient production systems. The results of this study support that stronger efforts should be made to enhance the role of small farms in achieving Mexican food sovereignty. This will not only have benefits in terms of food supply but may also have a wide range of social and environmental benefits.

Socioeconomic, demographic and geographic determinants of food consumption in Mexico.

What people eat affects public health and human wellbeing, agricultural production, and environmental sustainability. This paper explores the heterogeneity of food consumption patterns in an ecologically and culturally diverse country. Using a latent class approach (which creates clusters of individuals with homogeneous characteristics), we analyse a food questionnaire (from the National Health and Nutrition Survey) applied across Mexico. We identify four clusters of food consumption (staple, prudent, high meat and low fruit) and find that belonging to these clusters is determined by socioeconomic, demographic (age, sex) and geographic (region, urban/rural) characteristics. Maize and pulses tend to constitute a larger proportion of the diet of poor, rural populations living in the south, while urban populations eat more varied foods, including ingredients whose production systems tend to exert more pressure on natural resources (for instance, meat). Despite the importance given in the literature to the Mexican gastronomy and its diverse traditional regional diets, we find that only 6% of the population adopts a food consumption pattern resembling the traditional Mexican diet. Instead, most of the Mexican population has a food consumption pattern resembling a western diet, which is problematic in terms of public health and environmental sustainability.

What is "informal" in informal waste management? Insights from the case of waste collection in the Tepito neighbourhood, Mexico City.

This paper explores the meaning of the concept of informality as applied to the waste management sector, by presenting the case of municipal waste collection in a neighbourhood of Mexico City called Tepito. Tepito's municipal service of waste collection is intricately related to informal activities of waste collection and management. This paper focuses on the work of informal street sweepers, who collect waste in certain streets of the neighbourhood, replacing the municipal collection service; and on that of "volunteers", unwaged informal workers recruited by the garbage-men to help on the municipal collection route. The informal cash flows resulting from the work of the volunteers are also described. The case of Tepito illustrates two formal-informal arrangements in the provision of the waste collection service: the coordination of independent services, and a relation of interdependence where the formal system is sustained by informal work. By exploring the scale of informality, the actors involved, and its governance system, this paper suggests that informality exists not as a particular sector of waste management, but rather as unregulated practices carried out by governmental and non-governmental actors, which are enabled by an informal governance system, and which (in Tepito) play a crucial role in sustaining the municipal waste collection service. As different systems of service provision are co-constructed by both formal and informal elements, informality may best be identified at the level of practices that occur within such systems. Conclusions discuss policy implications and avenues for future research.