Biodiversity and agrifood systems - Introduction

This course targets:

• government officials and policymakers involved in designing, coordinating and implementing agrifood and biodiversity policies;
• programme officers and technical specialists working on biodiversity and agrifood systems;
• researchers and technical staff from institutions related to agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture;
• students and researchers interested in biodiversity and agrifood systems;
• other relevant stakeholders engaged in agrifood systems, including agrifood producers and extension workers.

• The concepts of biodiversity at ecosystems, species and genetic levels and how they relate to agrifood systems.
• How biodiversity contributes to food security and nutrition and to the resilience of agrifood systems.
• The global decline of biodiversity, the direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss and the role of agrifood systems.
• The importance of mainstreaming biodiversity across agrifood systems and the actions that can be taken to achieve this.

The course is composed of four lessons, lasting approximately from 20 to 25 minutes:

• Lesson 1 - Biodiversity in the context of agrifood systems
• Lesson 2 - Biodiversity and its importance for agrifood systems
• Lesson 3 - The status of biodiversity and the drivers of change
• Lesson 4 - Mainstreaming biodiversity across agrifood systems

The online version of this course runs on the latest versions of the major browsers, such as Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox.

The downloadable version only runs on Windows PC’s and no additional software is needed.