Bilateral meeting with H. E. Sari Multala, Minister for Climate and the Environment of The Republic of Finland

Rome - The FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, met H. E. Sari Multala, Minister for Climate and the Environment of The Republic of Finland at FAO headquarters in Rome on the occasion of the resumed session of the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), hosted in FAO.

The Director-General welcomed Minister Multala to FAO and extended his best wishes for the ongoing COP16 deliberations. The Minister thanked the Director-General and expressed her appreciation to FAO for hosting the meeting. The pair discussed the centrality of biodiversity to global food security and the Director-General outlined FAO’s work on biodiversity since it’s foundation eighty years ago.

The Minister expressed satisfaction with the greater visibility given to biodiversity issues over recent years including FAO’s important role. She described the work ongoing in Finland to mainstream biodiversity especially in forestry policy, keeping a strong emphasis on research. She added that these policies give attention to the important role of the private sector through elements such as nature credit systems. The Director-General commended Finland’s innovative approach and the strong culture of academia, science and innovation. He referred to FAO’s similar approach which is headlined by the Science and Innovation Forum which is part of the World Food Forum in FAO headquarters every October.

Finally, the pair discussed global challenges such as increasing food and energy costs, the role of biodiversity as part of the solution including its important contribution to health and wellbeing.

The Director-General concluded by thanking the Minister for Finland’s longstanding commitment to FAO and looked forward to future ongoing collaboration.