Our Biodiversity, Our Food, Our Health

In his first blog, Juan Lucas Restrepo, Director General of Bioversity International, recognizes the International Day for Biological Diversity as a good time to reflect on the importance of agrobiodiversity as the foundation of food systems and to promote urgent changes that stop its loss.

Today marks the International Day for Biological Diversity. It will not be a happy celebration but rather a day to call for reflection and promote urgent changes that stop the massive loss of biodiversity, a daily phenomenon which puts in doubt our own survival, at least as we know it.

On 6 May, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) published a report where experts from 50 countries estimated that around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades. The causes are mostly anthropogenic (caused by people) and therefore solutions will also have to be people-led.