Food Systems and Conservation Working Group
The Food Systems and Conservation working group recognizes a need for greater understanding of the environmental impact of food production, distribution, and consumption systems across the globe, including impacts to human health. We recognize progressive avenues people can take that can positively and powerfully impact both personal health and our shared environment through nutrition.
Informed decision-making is empowered decision-making. Through wise food choices, measurable health benefits can be had on a personal level leading to decisions with better outcomes for the individual. Food choice, however, is influenced by the availability of options and access to those options, as well as the means of a party to make a choice in a cultural and socioeconomic context. Food choice also reflects awareness of options, and of the consequences of decisions.
Human population continues to grow exponentially. Projected to reach nearly 8 billion by 2020, and 10 billion by 2050, food choices across geopolitical regions have profound impacts on ecosystem functionality including vigor of species populations, the very persistence of remaining life forms, and landscapes. Food choices influence personal health, land use, the efficient use and replenishment of natural resources, and the very lab of life on Earth: wild land containing abundant populations of genetically diverse species persisting through time. The Food Systems and Conservation working group seeks to advance biodiversity conservation by working and communicating effectively at the intersection of these issues.