The Europe and Central Asia region is rich in biodiversity, hosting a great variety of wild relatives of cultivated plants and domesticated breeds.

Biodiversity provides ecosystem services – such as pollination, healthy soils and clean air – that are essential to all forms of life and are key to improving food security and nutrition. However, the conversion of land to intensive agriculture, the overexploitation and overharvesting of fish stocks, unsustainable food production and consumption patterns, the use of pesticides and agrochemicals, the proliferation of invasive species, and the changing climate, among other pressures, exacerbate biodiversity loss. As on the global scale, the rich biodiversity and diverse ecosystems of Europe and Central Asia are threatened by changes in land use and intensification in agricultural sectors. The problem of genetic erosion caused by, inter alia, the steady trend of the replacement of local varieties with modern ones is common across the region. The disappearance of the extraordinary diversity of cultivated plants and domesticated breeds selected over millennia and of agricultural and food production knowledge rooted in the cultural identities of local populations will inevitably lead to the collapse of ecosystem services, threatening food security. The FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, through Regional Initiative 3 – “Managing natural resources sustainably and preserving biodiversity in a changing climate” – supports Members in the region in their efforts to reverse the loss and restore biodiversity for food and agriculture and transition to more climate-resilient, sustainable agriculture and food systems by providing them with important tools, knowledge, information and technical support. Biodiversity for food and agriculture (BFA) is closely linked to the other Regional Initiatives (RI-1 and RI-2) as well.