Taxonomic capacity can improve environmental and economic sustainability in biodiversity-rich shade coffee farms in El Salvador

El Salvador has only 4.3% of its natural forest remaining. The loss of so much natural forest suggests that a large proportion of El Salvador's biodiversity and a number of ecosystem services are at risk. However, 11% of the country's land area supports shade agroforest for coffee production (based on Coffea arabica L.), and this has become the major forest resource for the country. We suggest that shade agroforest supports a considerable amount of native biodiversity but that the capacity to monitor and assess this diversity is lacking. Studies elsewhere in the world indicate that shade agroforest has levels of biological diversity of the same order of magnitude to that of natural forest. Shade agroforest for coffee should therefore play a central role in the conservation of biological diversity in El Salvador. The status of shade agroforest for coffee in national policies on biodiversity conservation is reviewed. We then identify and review the taxonomic capacity required to meet El Salvador's Biodiversity Action Plan and identify significant overlap with the capacity needed to conserve biological diversity in El Salvador's shade coffee farms. Currently, shade coffee is not economically sustainable and shade farms are under threat of conversion to non-forest systems. Developing the taxonomic capacity required to underpin the monitoring and inventory of biological diversity in shade coffee farms could also exploit a synergy between the biodiversity or environmental value and the economic sustainability of shade coffee production. Biological diversity inventory data could, therefore, not only support El Salvador's Biodiversity Action Plan but also generate added value to the coffee price through 'Biodiversity-friendly' and 'Migratory bird-friendiy' premium payments from the specialist coffee market, thereby providing some insurance against the volatility of the open market.