Biodiversity is one of the 13 principles underpinning the work of the Agroecology Coalition. On the International Day for Biological Diversity, we speak to Martin Oulu, coordinator of our member organization ISFAA (Kenya), about agroecology, biodiversity, and the challenges that the current food system presents in this respect. In this article you will also find relevant resources from WWF and CFAP, Cambodia.

Q: What does your organization do to protect biodiversity and promote agroecology?

ISFAA (Kenya) is the Inter-sectoral Forum on Agrobiodiversity and Agroecology, and our goal is the transformation of food systems through adoption and upscaling agroecology and conservation of biodiversity. We work for example on policy and law, trying to ensure a legislative framework for agrobiodiversity conservation. We are spearheading the development of a national agroecology strategy to ensure that we will have a more coordinated way of conserving biodiversity and giving incentives to farmers who adopt nature-positive solutions. So far, in Kenya, policies for biodiversity have mainly targeted protected areas, but often we don’t realize that most of biodiversity is outside of protected areas. Another area we work on is seeds sovereignty: we have a national law that criminalizes the selling and exchanging indigenous seeds if they are not certified, but the certification system does not work for indigenous seeds. We hold indigenous seeds and food fare to promote indigenous foods and advocate for more laws protecting these seeds. We also understand that transforming food systems also needs to go through the education system; for this we collaborate with schools and universities to rethink curricula and how they teach agriculture.