Biodiversity-based Agroecology Key to Human and Planetary Resilience

TWN Info Service on Biodiversity and TK, Sustainable Agriculture
7April 2021
Third World Network
www.twn.my

Dear Friends and Colleagues

Biodiversity-based Agroecology Key to Human and Planetary Resilience

Biodiversity is needed at every level of the food system. But despite this international recognition, the key threat remains the active promotion of a food system which runs contrary to its preservation. These threats come in the form of greater promotion and expansion of the industrial agricultural model, including the use of biodiversity-harming agrochemicals, a monocultural push toward seed uniformity and further centralization of genetic resources. All have devastating consequences in the form of creating nutritional precarity, whether through degraded health including an explosion of non-communicable diseases as consequence of industrial diets, or through loss of local access to biodiverse foods. Continuing down this path would risk the continual destruction of human and ecological health.

What is needed is a more socially just, ecologically protective, and nutritionally resilient transformation. In this sense, agroecological, organic farming shows us a systemic approach to addressing issues of biodiversity loss, nutritional and food security, and resiliency to respond to a variety of crises. Agroecology places biodiversity at the heart of its approach to mimicking natural ecosystem functioning. The way forward is being shown by small farmers, local communities and gardeners who base their local food system on biodiversity, and have been, in fact, more nutritionally resilient and self-sufficient during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

The article below points to the opportunity for a holistic paradigm shift with an ecological approach to food and agriculture, to help foster and protect Earth and human health. This acknowledges and moves toward a worldview that recognizes humanity as intimately interconnected and enmeshed in the web of all life. Such an approach requires a full and complete recognition of, and rebalancing of power toward, a biodiversity-based agroecological paradigm, which recognizes and respects the diversity of locally derived indigenous, traditional and peasant knowledge and puts food sovereignty at its centre.

 

With best wishes,

Third World Network

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THE BIODIVERSITY PARADIGM: BUILDING RESILIENCE FOR HUMAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

Ruchi Shrof and Carla Ramos Cortés
Development 63, 172–180 (2020)
11 Nov 2020
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-020-00260-2
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41301-020-00260-2

[EXCERPTS ONLY]

Abstract

It is a well-established fact that biodiversity is pivotal to human and planetary health, completely entwining biodiverse natural systems into a continuum, through our food systems, into human health. This means there is an intimate connection between the biodiversity of the soil, the biodiversity and interrelationships of cultivated and wild plants and animals. This article looks through an ecological sciences perspective at the interconnections and interrelations between human health and Earth’s health. But regardless of the wide recognition of the benefits of biodiversity, we are seeing a political and economic landscape which actively runs contrary to and further erodes diversity in favor of the globalized industrial food system, seed uniformity and further centralization through false tech solutions. A food system which is responsible for both setting the preconditions for the severity of the global COVID-19 pandemic by weakening human and animal health through an explosion of non-communicable diseases. The way forward is instead shown by small farmers, local communities and gardeners who are already implementing biodiversity-based organic agroecology, which both preserves and rejuvenates the health continuum between the soil, plants, animals, food and humans. Acting as a holistic paradigm shift where diversity in all areas is cultivated for ecological resilience.

[….]

The Two Pathways Forward

The pandemic, compounded with an already ongoing climate, ecological and biodiversity crisis, coupled with ballooning social inequalities, has placed us at a juncture. On the one hand we can follow the current international trend to continue the concentration of industrial agriculture and convergence of digital and financial technologies to vertically integrate the entire food chain—from seed to table—rendering our food systems more vulnerable overall (Shiva et al. 2018). Continuing down this path would risk the continual destruction of human and ecological health, a phenomenon whose consequences are now coming to fruition.

On the other hand, we also have the opportunity to truly foster an ecological approach to food and agriculture, taking into deep account the web of biodiversity discussed, to help foster and protect Earth and human health. This transformation is possible through agroecological and organic approaches, who use biodiversity to provide resilience. Therefore, we must recognize and move toward a worldview that recognizes humanity as intimately interconnected and enmeshed in the web of all life as intrinsically a part of nature. What we do to the planet affects us directly. A fact which requires a full and complete recognition, and rebalancing of power toward a biodiversity-based agroecological paradigm, which recognizes and respects the diversity of locally derived indigenous, traditional and peasant knowledge and puts food sovereignty at its center. This goes then beyond just mere nutrition, and into a different worldview of deep intimacy with the land. A worldview that holds respect for the diversity of all life.

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