Biodiversity

Biodiversity underpins most of the world’s economic activities, particularly in the agri-food sector, so the pace of its erosion must be contrasted with holistic and collective efforts, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said at UN Summit on Biodiversity.

"Its loss undermines global efforts to tackle poverty and hunger - no biodiversity, no food diversity," he said in a video address to the UN Summit on Biodiversity.

Qu spoke on behalf of several UN agencies and represented the United Nations system while participating in a Leaders Dialogue on how to mainstream biodiversity issues into the broader drive for sustainable development. The panel was co-chaired by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan, while interventions were made by more than a dozen heads of government or state from countries such as Belize, Kyrgyzstan and Zambia, along with UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay and the heads of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the International Parliamentary Union and WWF International.