Companies, standards and cooperatives improve their biodiversity policies
The LIFE Food & Biodiversity consortium of Global Nature Fund (GNF), Lake Constance Foundation, Fundación Global Nature, Instituto Superior Técnico, Agentur auf!, Solagro, agence good for good prepared "Recommendations for effective biodiversity criteria in standards and sourcing requirements" in collaboration with more than 90 representatives from standards, companies, NGOs, scientific institutions, and ministries. Based on these recommendations, 39 different food companies food standards and agricultural cooperatives improved their biodiversity criteria or are in the process of doing so. More are still to come, as the Global Nature Fund and partners continue the collaboration with the food sector, for example in national roundtables of the food sector!
Tools to assess and monitor biodiversity in the agri-food sector
The Biodiversity Performance Tool was developed to support farmers with the creation of Biodiversity Action Plans. Easy to use, it gives an insight into the current situation of a farm in terms of biodiversity and provides agricultural measures to specifically support biodiversity in this context. You find more information here.
The Biodiversity Monitoring System (BMS) enables the monitoring of impacts on biodiversity on an aggregated level. The target groups are standards, food companies and cooperatives aiming to monitor the biodiversity performance of their certified farms, suppliers or members. The BMS is accessible on www.biodiversity-performance.eu. The Biodiversity Monitoring System fills the current lack of monitoring in the food sector. The indicators cover the main aspects of biodiversity and are a good compromise between practicability and scientific standards. The BMS can be tested free of charge until the end of 2021.
Biodiversity Trainings and Biodiversity Action Plans
Over the period of the project, training on the topic of biodiversity has shown to be of outstanding importance. Be it in the form of seminars or train of trainer workshops, over 1.200 representative from the food sector attended these events. Meeting such an interest in biodiversity, all training formats will be offered in future, too.
Furthermore, support and guidance in setting up Biodiversity Action Plans at farm level are an important aspect, which may boost a supplier’s biodiversity performance.