The statement ‘unlocking the potential of biodiversity’ has become one of Bioversity International’s trademark statements in which it clearly demonstrates why the organization “is at the forefront of global scientific efforts to research and demonstrates the vital role of biodiversity in farming and forest systems.”
To showcase what this really means in terms of relevance, we need only look at Bioversity International’s 2010 focused achievements in three inter-connected areas, namely agricultural sustainability, livelihoods and nutrition.
In terms of agricultural sustainability, Bioversity International had concluded a global study “on six crops (banana, barley, common bean, faba bean, maize and rice) in four countries (China, Ecuador, Morocco and Uganda), which confirmed that agricultural biodiversity can be a usable alternative to expensive chemical inputs in protecting harvests against pests and diseases.” This first phase of the project was generously funded by the UN Environment Programme’s Division for Global Enviroment Facility (UNEP-GEF), the Swiss Development Corporation (SDC) and the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO).
On the livelihoods front, a well-established partnership in India bore fruit when some 200 farming families benefited from a food surplus and saw their income increase by up to 30%. How did this happen? Bioversity International and its partners supported the villagers “through the production and commercialization of three neglected millet species: little millet (Panicum sumatrense), finger millet (Eleusine coracana) and foxtail millet (Setaria italica). Among other actions, researchers and farmers established improved seed production and seed distribution systems.” The accomplishments on the benefits of agricultural biodiversity would not have been possible without Bioversity’s strong partners, namely the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and universities in Bangalore and Dharwad that have been dedicated to “neglected and underutilized species in a series of projects supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).”
Towards the end of the year, Bioversity International co-hosted, along with FAO, Biodiversity and Sustainable Diets: United Against Hunger event for the International Scientific Symposium. At the meeting’s closure, there were several successful conclusions including the agreement to “develop a clear and workable definition of what constitutes a sustainable diet as well as a call for the development of a Code of Conduct to promote food-based systems to improve human nutrition, particularly in poor rural areas.”
And to top it all off, was it really any coincidence that 2010 was also declared the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity? For more information, take a look at Bioversity International’s 2010 Annual Report.
This post is part of our series celebrating “40 years of CGIAR”
Photo Credit: B.Sthapit/Bioversity