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Biodiversity refers to the variety of living species on Earth, including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi. Healthy ecosystems, rich with biodiversity, are fundamental to human existence.Ecosystems sustain human life in a myriad of ways, cleaning our air, purifying our water, ensuring the availability of nutritious foods, nature-based medicines and raw materials, and reducing the occurrence of disasters. While Earth’s biodiversity is so rich that many species have yet to be discovered, many species are being threatened with extinction due to human activities, putting the Earth’s magnificent biodiversity at risk. Read More Biodiversity for food and agriculture (BFA) is, in turn, the subset of biodiversity - that contributes in one way or another to agriculture and food production. It includes the domesticated plants and animals that are part of crop, livestock, forest or aquaculture systems, harvested forest and aquatic species, the wild relatives of domesticated species, and other wild species harvested for food and other products. FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Download the Full Report

Biodiversity is important to most aspects of our human lives providing food, fuel, shelter, and medicine. It also offers spiritual, religious and cultural value offering deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of earth. Biodiversity also plays a fundamental role sustaining our ecosystems by providing crucial services such as pollination, seed dispersal, climate regulation, water purification, nutrient cycling, and control of agricultural pests. While we still have much to learn about the benefits of biodiversity, humans continue to put extensive pressure on nature through overproduction, deforestation, plastic pollution and greenhouse emissions. Read More

About 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted each year—four times the amount needed to feed the more than 800+ million people who are malnourished. It’s time to reconsider food. Around the globe, food production, distribution, management and waste threaten wildlife, wild places and the planet itself. Today, 7.3 billion people consume 1.6 times what the earth’s natural resources can supply. By 2050, the world’s population will reach 9 billion and the demand for food will double. So how do we produce more food for more people without expanding the land and water already in use? We can’t double the amount of food. Fortunately we don’t have to, we have to double the amount of food available instead. In short, we must freeze the footprint of food. Read More Watch - To Change the Way You Think About Food!

Worldwide material consumption has expanded rapidly, as has material footprint per capita, seriously jeopardizing the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 12 and the Goals more broadly. Urgent action is needed to ensure that current material needs do not lead to the overextraction of resources or to the degradation of environmental resources, and should include policies that improve resource efficiency, reduce waste and mainstream sustainability practices across all sectors of the economy. Read more.

It may not seem obvious, but the issue of food waste is linked to zoonotic diseases—meaning diseases that jump from animal to human—such as COVID-19. Agriculture is a major driver of human expansion into natural ecosystems, which, as the head of the United Nations Environment Programme, Inger Andersen, explained in a recent interview with The Guardian, can mean trouble. “Our continued erosion of wild spaces, of our primary forests and our ecosystems, have brought us uncomfortably close to reservoir hosts—animals and plants that harbour diseases that can jump to humans,” she says. “As we continue our relentless move into natural habitats, contact between humans and reservoir hosts increases—all of which increases the likelihood of interaction between vectors and humans.” Learn more.

Bees and other pollinators, such as butterflies, bats and hummingbirds, are increasingly under threat from human activities. Pollination is a fundamental process for the survival of our ecosystems. Nearly 90% of the world’s wild flowering plant species depend, entirely, or at least in part, on animal pollination, along with more than 75% of the world’s food crops and 35% of global agricultural land. Not only do pollinators contribute directly to food security, but they are key to conserving biodiversity. To raise awareness of the importance of pollinators, the threats they face and their contribution to sustainable development, the UN designated 20 May as World Bee Day. The goal is to strengthen measures aimed at protecting bees and other pollinators, which would significantly contribute to solving problems related to the global food supply and eliminate hunger in developing countries. Watch the video and BEE ENGAGED We all depend on pollinators and it is, therefore, crucial to monitor their decline and halt the loss of biodiversity. Learn More