Hardly any other industry depends so much on intact ecosystems and their services as the food sector. However, over exploitation, pollution, habitat destruction and the climate crisis have led to a steady increase in species extinction for years – according to the World Biodiversity Council, around one million species worldwide are acutely threatened with extinction. So how can the food industry react to this development and develop more sustainable strategies for the future? What levers can be used to better protect ecosystems? These and other questions will be addressed at the conference on “Biodiversity in the Food Sector” on May 22nd and 23rd, 2023 in the Evangelical Academy in Frankfurt am Main
The host is the “Food for Biodiversity” association, which, two years after it was founded, is hosting its second specialist conference. The event takes place as part of the “Biodiversity Business – UBi” project and is funded by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation as part of the Federal Biological Diversity Program with funds from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection. The event begins on May 22, 2023 at 3 p.m. and ends on May 23, 2023 at 5 p.m.The conference is aimed at decision-makers in the food industry and interested trade visitors. Participation is free of charge, participants register under this link .
Responsibilities, challenges and solutions
In three thematic blocks and a mixture of keynote speeches, workshops and fishbowl discussions, the conference is dedicated to the most important questions relating to biodiversity protection in the food sector. The first thematic block deals with the responsibility of the food industry in interaction with agriculture and highlights possible levers to influence this positively. The second thematic block deals with legal and regulatory challenges to which the sector must respond, and the third thematic block is dedicated to raw materials originating from tropical countries using best practice examples.
The industry initiative “Food for Biodiversity”
The association Food for Biodiversity was founded as an industry initiative in March 2021 with the aim of protecting biological diversity and contributing to the transformation of current into sustainable and future-proof food systems. The 27 members – including companies, associations, standard organizations, environmental organizations and a research institute – are currently implementing pilot projects and working on the continuous improvement of important tools such as the basic set of biodiversity criteria and the recently introduced basic set of tropics. The association is open to new members.
