Replanting agricultural biodiversity in the CBD

It is essential that agriculture returns centre stage. It needs to be addressed both as a destructive force, and for its ability to nurture and restore biodiversity

Agricultural biodiversity is a central part of biodiversity overall, underpinning the food system and providing fibre, feed, fuel, medicines, and materials or shelter;

However, it is increasingly neglected by the CBD. From an all-important setting at the heart of sustainable development, use, equity and conservation in the early years of the CBD, agricultural biodiversity has lost its central place in the Convention. So has agriculture itself, as the Convention and its Parties fail to implement policies to meet the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

As negotiations on the GBF continue, it is essential that agriculture returns centre stage. It needs to be addressed both as a destructive force, and for its ability to nurture and restore biodiversity. Today’s industrial, large-scale agriculture and intensive livestock production are identified as the biggest driver of land-use change, ecosystem exploitation and destruction. However, agriculture is also a solution: in contrast to industrial agriculture, peasant agriculture and food provision, practised by the majority of the world’s small-scale farmers, nurtures and safeguards agricultural biodiversity.  

A new Friends of the Earth International report explores the ways in which the CBD and the international community can place it at the centre of rebuilding an agro-biodiverse and just world.

Read it online here: https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Replanting-Agricultural-biodiversity-in-the-CBD.pdf

By Faris Ahmed

__________________________________________________________________________

The opinions,commentaries, and articles printed in ECO are the sole opinion of the individual authors or organizations, unless otherwise expressed.