Land tenure as a catalyst: Synergizing gender equality and agrobiodiversity conservation for sustainable development in Asian vulnerable areas

Agrobiodiversity, as an important land use pattern, plays a critical role in enhancing ecological resilience, promoting sustainable food production, and facilitating adaptation to climate change, especially for smallholder farmers in vulnerable areas. Although literature often incorporates land tenure into broader indices of women’s empowerment in agriculture, the direct relationship between women’s land tenure and agrobiodiversity remains underexplored. Using species and variety richness as indicators of household-level agrobiodiversity, this study examines the effect of women’s land tenure on household crop diversity and explores whether women’s intra-household decision-making regarding crop choice constitutes a potential pathway and assesses heterogeneity across socioeconomic and geographic contexts. Using primary data collected from 1089 households across 12 vulnerable sites of four distinct geographic ecosystems in five Asian countries (Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Nepal, and Thailand), this study employs a Negative Binomial regression model and the Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment method. The results consistently demonstrate that women’s land tenure significantly increases the diversity of crop species and varieties cultivated by households on average, with notable effects on both staple and non-staple grain crops, but it varies across countries. The positive effects on crop species diversity are more evident in the countries with initially low crop diversity such as Cambodia, Myanmar, and Thailand, while the effects on variety diversity are strongest in Cambodia and Thailand. In Nepal, where baseline crop diversity is high, the effect of women’s land tenure is negligible, whereas the effect is more concentrated in staple and non-staple grain crop species in China. Women possessing land tenure are more likely to make crop choice decisions independently, a pattern consistent with decision-making power as a potential pathway to greater crop diversity. In addition, the positive effects are more pronounced in the freshwater and dryland ecosystems, and among the households with higher income. These findings provide implications for land governance and land use policies, showing that strengthening women’s land rights effectively support household agrobiodiversity and synergies Sustainable Development Goals: gender equality (SDG 5), agrobiodiversity conservation (SDG 15), and equal access to control over land (SDGs 1 & 2).