FAO DG Highlights Role of Agrifood Systems in Solving Biodiversity and Climate Crises

With 828 million people facing hunger in 2021, there's an apparent urgency to adapt agrifood systems to address the biodiversity and climate crises, according to QU Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). This month, he tackled the issue during High-Level Ministerial Meeting on Sustaining Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Food Security held in Hyderabad, India. G20 Agricultural Ministers attended the meeting.

"Despite progress, today we are facing alarming rates of biodiversity loss, jeopardizing food security and nutrition, poverty eradication, prevention of natural disasters, and climate change mitigation and adaptation," Qu said.

The interlinkages between food security and biodiversity are recognized by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which was adopted in December 2022 during the UN Biodiversity Conference. More than half of the GBF targets for 2030 are directly linked to agrifood systems, which include food and non-food agricultural products, from production to consumption.

The FAO DG further encouraged the Agriculture Ministers that they must be actively engaged in making sure that their biodiversity commitments are entirely implemented, considering environmental degradation, social impacts, and economic opportunities for the agricultural sectors.

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