When addressing G20 Agriculture Ministers, Qu Dongyu, the director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), emphasised that agrifood systems are necessary to solve biodiversity loss and the current climate crisis the planet is facing.
The address was part of a High-Level Ministerial Meeting on Sustaining Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Food Security in Hyderabad, India.
He said that despite progress globally, the countries, communities and people were facing an alarming rate of biodiversity loss, declining food security, nutrition, poverty eradication, prevention of natural disasters and climate change mitigation and adaptation,
Dongyu continued that as many as 828 million people globally faced hunger in 2021, with 3.1 billion unable to afford a healthy diet in 2020, facts which he bullet-pointed to underline the level of urgency.
Genetic diversity was a solution that Dongyu said was needed to adapt agrifood systems to climate change, emerging pests, pathogens, and the changing environmental conditions of the planet.
Diversification of food species and the developing of healthy ecosystems to provide water, regulate climate, and resistance against disasters, was imperative.
Dongyu added that the drivers of biodiversity loss were often found to result from inappropriate agricultural practices.
"My message is clear, agrifood systems must be part of the solution to the biodiversity and climate crises," Dongyu said.
This included promoting improved practices to address trade-offs, ecosystem maintenance, land and soil quality assurance, reduced input use, and higher resilience and adaptability to extreme weather events.
