MDG 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability

Protecting biodiversity, forests, fisheries, soil and water is an overarching objective of CGIAR research. Agriculture is the primary interface connecting human beings and the environment and accounts for the bulk of human exploitation of such natural resources as land and water. Agricultural activities - including habitat encroachment through agricultural expansion, and freshwater diversion and the mining of aquifers for irrigation - have transformed between a third and half of the earth's land surface. Current practices threaten long-term sustainability. Sustainable development critically requires shrinking agriculture's large and growing ecological footprint. Biodiversity is being lost at unprecedented rates, and 25 biodiversity hotspots occupying only 1.4 percent of the earth support more than 60 percent of the planet's plant and animal species. Protecting such hotspots from encroachment requires the sustainable intensification of agriculture, allowing more yield per unit of land and of water through improved cultivars, techniques, inputs, infrastructure, incentives and institutional support.

Research Results:

Eleven CGIAR genebanks together hold the world's largest collection of crop biodiversity, with over 600,000 samples. These seed samples represent a 10th of the world's unique samples of major food crops, with the emphasis on farmers' traditional varieties. Of the more than 1 million CGIAR samples exchanged over the past decade, over 80 percent went to universities and national agricultural research systems in developing countries

Fertilizer tree systems can capture 100 kilograms of atmospheric nitrogen per hectare per year and convert it into forms useful to crops. They allow poor farmers to double or triple their maize yields without buying expensive nitrogen fertilizer.