Environmental changes, including climate change, human-made and natural disasters, represent fundamental threats to food security and livelihoods. These shocks and longer-term environmental changes deeply affect human beings and their environment, directly and indirectly. Biodiversity for food and agriculture and ecosystem services, on which food production relies, will, when negatively impacted, in turn negatively affect food security and livelihoods. Stressors and risks factors are diverse and their cumulative effects strongly impact all types of production systems and all sectors - plants, animals, aquatic resources, forests, micro-organisms and invertebrates - around the world.

One of FAO’s Strategic Objectives is to increase the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crisis, including natural disasters, emergencies in the food chain, socio-economic shocks, violent conflicts and protracted crises. The growing recognition that food and agricultural systems meet the requirements of a growing population more efficiently if they have the capacity to adapt to the impacts of environmental, economic and social trends and drivers of change, has led to increasing interest in the concept of resilience. The conservation and use of a broad range of genetic resources in agriculture appears as an essential element of resilience strategies. Biodiversity for food and agriculture and the ecosystem services it supports are an integrated key element of the resilience of production systems. Local communities and researchers rely on biodiversity for food and agriculture to improve the quality and output of food production, to adapt to changes and shocks and limit their effects, and to respond to future challenges.

The FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Commission) is the only intergovernmental forum that specifically deals with biodiversity for food and agriculture (i.e. plants, animals, aquatic resources, forests, micro-organisms and invertebrates). The Commission promotes a world without hunger by fostering the use and development of the whole portfolio of biodiversity important to food security and rural poverty alleviation.

This special event will highlight the roles and limitations of biodiversity for food and agriculture in contributing to the resilience of livelihoods and production systems. It will discuss the concept of resilience, including its short and long-term perspectives, and allow for the sharing of sectoral and/or country experiences highlighting linkages between biodiversity for food and agriculture and resilience.

The event will offer delegates, policy makers and experts an opportunity to exchange information and experiences and to identify opportunities and ways forward to strengthen the resilience of livelihoods and productions systems in environmental changes, shocks and crisis contexts.