ITS EDUCATION ASIA ARTICLE

Integrating agriculture with biodiversity conservation

By Danny Harrington, MD ITS Education Asia

Highly recommended read in IISD by Maria Helena Semedo, Deputy Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) - Food System Transformation to Boost Biodiversity and Feed the Planet. She makes the point that agriculture needs to be considered as part of our ecosystems, not somehow magically separate from them and thus a holistic approach to biodiversity needs to embrace agriculture and other forms of human ecosystem interventions to truly deliver on its goals.

“Unsustainable production and consumption patterns that contribute to biodiversity loss need to be reversed – including by addressing inefficient use of natural resources like water, soils and inputs for production, water scarcity, floods and pollution, land degradation and desertification, soil nutrient depletion, large-scale deforestation, overexploitation of fishery resources and pasture, and of course, climate change. If managed sustainably, agrifood systems contribute to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity.”