What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get managed
The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT has created a tool to measure and boost the agricultural biodiversity of nations.
Agricultural biodiversity – or agrobiodiversity – is the variety and variability of animals, plants and microorganisms that sustain ecosystems and provide food and non-food agricultural products. A foundation of sustainable food systems, agrobiodiversity has significant benefits. It boosts total productivity and quality of nutrition in diets. It increases resilience, soil health and water quality while reducing the need for water, synthetic fertilizers and other costly inputs. It can also reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to less diverse farms. Despite the benefits, few decision-makers – governments, investors and companies – have well-developed policies to mainstream agrobiodiversity in food systems. The Agrobiodiversity Index is the first standardized tool of its kind to measure agrobiodiversity and identify concrete actions to achieve diverse and sustainable food systems. This new index applies a sustainability lens on diets and markets, production systems and genetic resources. It also enables countries to compare and contrast their agrobiodiversity scores and understand in which areas they can improve.