Blog Agrobiodiversity for Climate Action and Ecosystem Restoration

“From soil to microorganisms, bugs, plant varieties, pollinators and plenty more, agrobiodiversity is the complexity of life in agricultural landscapes. Why is it important? Agrobiodiversity is clearly connected with healthy ecosystems and communities. Today, our world faces complex challenges, and these require complex solutions, one of which is agrobiodiversity,” says Francesca Grazioli, an expert on biodiversity in food and agriculture and Researcher at the Alliance. 

High levels of agrobiodiversity are found in food production systems such as agroforestry (the integration of trees into cropland and/or livestock pasture), crop rotation (alternating the crops grown on a piece of land from one season to the next), or even the alternating of crop production with livestock grazing. These systems bring valuable ecosystem services – including increased soil fertility (due to the diversity of nutrients gained from diverse inputs), which is key in mitigating the acceleration of climate change. Healthy soils act as a carbon sink, sequestering atmospheric C02, directly contributing to the mitigation of climate change.  

Furthermore, most large-scale farming systems rely on chemical fertilizers to increase yield; however, unlike agrobiodiverse systems, these inputs damage soil microorganisms, pollute waterways, and directly contribute to climate change through the high levels of greenhouse gases emitted by their production. On the other hand, agrobiodiverse systems rarely require chemical inputs, as residues from the diverse vegetation and even animals on agricultural land – such as leaves, plant residues and animal waste that turn into compost – fertilize soil naturally. By increasing carbon sequestration and reducing the need for chemical inputs, agrobiodiversity in agricultural landscapes contributes to climate change mitigation, making these farming systems a driver towards planetary health, rather than a contribution to climate change and ecosystem degradation. 

Adaptation to climate change: Building resilience 

Agrobiodiverse food production systems contribute to various forms of resilience, including the resilience of landscapes and livelihoods, thus strengthening food systems overall.  

While some impacts of climate change – such as drought and flooding – are already damaging agricultural land, increasing agrobiodiversity by integrating new species and diversifying practices provide can allow farmers to increase the health of their soils, thus adapting to the damage that climate change has already done. Furthermore, diversifying farmland can increase farmers’ livelihood resilience in two ways: firstly, diversification increases the number of products that farmers can sell (e.g. crop producers that integrate trees into their fields can also begin to sell timber or tree products); second, as different species have differing levels of tolerance to environmental stressors (such as climate change-induced drought), it is more likely that even if one product is damaged, farmers can still sell the products that tolerate these stressors. By diversifying food production, agrobiodiversity can become a tool for climate change adaptation, for the benefit of both ecosystems and livelihoods. 

Upscaling agrobiodiversity: Encouraging diversification 

Promoting agrobiodiversity is a cornerstone of the Alliance’s work, ensuring that progress towards global food security is based on practices that enhance – rather than degrade – agricultural landscapes.  

One of the Alliance’s flagship initiatives to upscale agrobiodiversity is its Agrobiodiversity Index, which won the 2023 Food Planet Prize for “doing something that has never been tried before”. The Index collects data on biodiversity in agriculture across countries and production systems, measuring levels of agrobiodiversity while identifying actions, risks, and opportunities to increase its use. By identifying to what extent countries, companies, projects and policies are contributing to agrobiodiversity, the Index is intended to stimulate positive action by facilitating evaluation and informing decision-making. 

Meanwhile, taking a more hands-on approach, the Alliance’s SUSTLIVES project in Burkina Faso and Niger improves the resilience of rural communities by upscaling the use of local underutilized species, thus increasing the variety of crops grown, and increasing agrobiodiversity. The project provides farmers with locally adapted varieties that are more tolerant to adverse climate change, thus increasing their harvests and nutrition. The use of native underutilized varieties is of increasing interest globally, because as concluded by an Alliance study on the use of local varieties in India: “As many of these plants are better performing on than major commodities, underutilized crops could be key to improving the resilience of farming systems to climate change”. These results align with the aforementioned IPCC report that affirms: “locally developed seeds can help protect local agrobiodiversity, and can often be more climate resilient than commercial varieties.”