The United Nations has proclaimed 2010 to be the International year of Biodiversity. The theme of the International Day for Biological Diversity 2010, on 22 May, is Biodiversity, Development and Poverty Alleviation.

Biodiversity is the sum of all existing species, their interactions and the ecosystems they form. According to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), human beings share the planet with as many as 13 million living species, including plants, animals and bacteria – of which only 1.75 million have been named and recorded. This incredible natural wealth forms the ultimate foundation of our human well-being. These complex intertwined systems and processes collectively provide our food, water and the air we breathe – the basic fundamentals of life.

Agricultural biodiversity: the foundation of rural development

Biodiversity is also the basis for agriculture, and both, together, are crucial in maintaining and improving food security. If agricultural systems are to be productive and sustainable, they need clean water and healthy soil, and a variety of genetic resources and ecological processes. Every plant, animal and microorganism has a role in regulating essential ecosystem services, such as water conservation, decomposition of waste and nutrient cycling, pollination, pest and disease control, climate regulation, erosion control and flood prevention, carbon sequestration and much more.

Today the connection between agricultural biodiversity and the fight against rural poverty is clearer than ever. Three quarters of the world’s 1.4 billion extremely poor people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture and related activities for their livelihoods. Since rural dwellers are often among the world’s poorest and most vulnerable groups, preserving and enhancing the use of agricultural biodiversity is a necessary component of sustainable rural development, food security and poverty reduction.

“2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity,” said IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanze. “So this is a timely opportunity to remind the world of how agricultural biodiversity can improve productivity and nutrition, enhance livelihoods, respond to environmental challenges and deliver food security. Indeed, biodiversity is a vital tool for rural development and poverty reduction.”

Nwanze added, “Agricultural research for development can help protect and enhance biodiversity if it draws on the generations of knowledge accumulated by farming communities and indigenous peoples.”

Rural populations have relied on the environment for thousands of years, and local knowledge of that environment has persisted throughout. This unique relationship means that rural men and women have accumulated specialized information about biological variation and management, allowing them to protect themselves against crop failure, drought, pests and diseases, and other threatening factors.

Farmers are both users and custodians of biodiversity, and local communities play a key role in mobilizing its benefits. As managers of the ecosystems in which they live, farmers and community members have a major impact on their sustainable use.

”Through our focus on pro-poor innovations, IFAD supports the development and diffusion of sustainable agricultural technologies. We clearly recognise that technological change should support the natural resource base, and not happen at the expense of it,” said Nwanze. “Many of the poor rural people who participate in our projects and programmes live in remote, marginalised agro-ecosystems.

Conserving the fragile agricultural biodiversity of these areas is critical to the sustainability of their livelihoods.”

Cultural traditions intimately tied to biodiversity

IFAD-sponsored programmes are helping poor farmers and indigenous peoples contribute to the preservation of species and ecosystems. Biodiversity is important in much of IFAD’s work, both through grants to research partners and through programmes and projects focusing on poor rural people.

For example, IFAD has funded several projects implemented by Bioversity International, including the Programme for Enhancing the Contribution of Neglected and Underutilized Crops to Food Security and to the Incomes of the Rural Poor. Launched in 2001, the programme was successfully completed four years later, laying the groundwork for a three-year follow-up programme that began in 2007. The foundation of these studies is a firmly held and increasingly recognized belief that biodiversity is important to people's lives, and that one way of protecting biodiversity is to support the use and appreciation of plant species that are currently neglected and underutilized.

Through our research grants to Bioversity International and to Unity and Cooperation for Development of Peoples (Ucodep), IFAD has learned that when people are encouraged to value local diversity and the related knowledge, it improves their income and nutrition. It also bolsters the self-esteem and confidence of community members, including the most marginalized.

As highlighted by the CBD, biodiversity’s contribution to our life is not only practical and physical, but also cultural . Diversity has been a constant source of inspiration throughout human history.

Biodiversity has influenced traditions, the way our society has evolved and the supply of basic goods and services on which trade and economies are built. Cultural biodiversity includes traditional knowledge of the uses of natural resources most relevant to our lives, such as local medicinal plants used to treat specific ailments, or indigenous crops resistant to harsh climatic conditions. The disappearance of unique species and varieties nurtured by generations of farmers and other users is thus an enormous loss to society as a whole.

Poverty reduction hinges on maintaining all facets of biodiversity

Poor rural people have found ingenious ways of deploying and conserving biodiversity in sustainable ways – for instance through sacred groves, where community members pay tribute to their gods by conserving the trees and other species dedicated to them.

“The physical and cultural environment, technology, social organization and ideology do not each exist separately,” said Rima Alcadi, IFAD economist and Coordinator of Small Grants. “They form a more or less integrated system designed to adapt a society as securely as possible to its surroundings. A change in one aspect of this adaptive structure often causes alterations in other parts of the system.”

The consequences of biodiversity loss and ecosystem service degradation are not being shared equally across the world. The areas of richest biodiversity are in developing countries, where billions of people rely on them to meet their basic needs.

“As highlighted by Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate in economics,” said Alcadi, “human development is the process of enlarging people’s choices and enhancing human freedoms and the range of things people can be and do. The goal is for all to live long and healthy lives, acquiring knowledge and having access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living. Human adaptability is impressive, but not infinite. Development paradigms need to consider the limits of human, social and cultural resources and provide for their renewal; otherwise neither economic growth nor ecological survival can be accomplished.”