Enabled or Disabled: Is the Environment Right for Using Biodiversity to Improve Nutrition?

Abstract

How can we ensure that 9 billion people will have access to a nutritious and healthy diet that is produced in a sustainable manner by 2050? Despite major advances, our global food system still fails to feed a significant part of humanity adequately. Diversifying food systems and diets to include nutrient-rich species can help reduce malnutrition, while contributing other multiple benefits including healthy ecosystems. While research continues to demonstrate the value of incorporating biodiversity into food systems and diets, perverse subsidies, and barriers often prevent this. Countries like Brazil have shown that, by strategic actions and interventions, it is indeed possible to create better contexts to mainstream biodiversity for improved nutrition into government programs and public policies. Despite some progress, there are few global and national policy mechanisms or processes that effectively join biodiversity with agriculture and nutrition efforts. This perspective paper discusses the benefits of biodiversity for nutrition and explores what an enabling environment for biodiversity to improve nutrition might look like, including examples of steps and actions from a multi-country project that other countries might replicate. Finally, we suggest what it might take to create enabling environments to mainstream biodiversity into global initiatives and national programs and policies on food and nutrition security. With demand for new thinking about how we improve agriculture for nutrition and growing international recognition of the role biodiversity, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development presents an opportunity to move beyond business-as-usual to more holistic approaches to food and nutrition security.

The Intertwined Relationship Between Malnutrition and Poverty

“…In developing countries, bio-fortification could focus on improving quality of coarse cereals, as well as fodders along with community participatory approaches to enhance agricultural biodiversity. This approach not only could contribute to a reduction in malnutrition and poverty, but reduce food insecurity and improve sustainability ( 31 , 32 ), though further research is needed in the domain ( 30 , 31 ). Income disparity is also a factor that allows the malnutrition-poverty cycle to persist.…”

The Post-Anthropocene Diet: Navigating Future Diets for Sustainable Food Systems

“…Indigenous ontologies underpin the diets of indigenous peoples, which are linked to food systems that provision those diets [37,42]. From the exploration of local foods to the incorporation of sustainable commercial foods, indigenous ontologies can model sustainable diets for larger populations [27,43]. Indigenous food systems are a globally-varied, diverse set of indigenous peoples' management, traditional practices, and temporally-deep cultural knowledge [27].…”

Diversifying institutional food procurement:

“…Combinations of these species and varieties/breeds within our diets are mostly able to fulfill optimal human dietary needs as well as provide a local solution to diet-related nutrition and health conditions. However, realizing the potential of biodiversity to achieving improved and sus-tainable nutrition outcomes along with economic development is a challenge and there remain many barriers to creating more effective enabling environments for mobilizing biodiversity for food and nutrition (Hunter et al 2016). It requires sustained efforts and activities focusing on strengthening the evidence base, improving policies, markets and governance as well as building capacity and raising awareness.…”

“…At present there are many barriers and obstacles in Brazil, as there are elsewhere, preventing the better integration of biodiversity for enhancing food and nutrition security (Hunter et al, 2016). These challenges include: the knowledge and evidence gap that exists around native biodiversity and its nutritional value; limited capacity and research partnerships to address this; making this information widely available and in formats that meet the knowledge needs of a wide range of actors (from nutritionists to senior policy makers); establishing policy platforms and revising policy and regulatory frameworks; identifying and developing markets both public and private; and, promoting greater awareness and understanding of the nutrition and food benefits of native biodiversity (Hunter et al 2015).…”