Biodiversity loss, climate change, food security, and pandemics are among the main challenges facing humanity. Anthropogenic pollution, intensive land use, and deforestation for food and timber production are important drivers of biodiversity loss. They cause habitat fragmentation, soil degradation, and increased water demand. Furthermore, climate change and biodiversity loss are two related challenges intensifying each other; a mutual reinforcement that should be investigated more closely.

The Resource Nexus offers an opportunity to address these challenges and to develop sustainable solutions. The overarching objective of this research theme is to address strategies for multi-purpose land use that can contribute to achieving food production and land and climate protection, while alleviating pressure on biodiversity – thereby ensuring that food security can be achieved without compromising biodiversity and associated ecosystem services.

UNU-FLORES seeks to accomplish this through the implementation and scaling of regional case studies and best practices in the most vulnerable areas, that would result in:

• uptake of innovations resulting in a reduced demand for land or water resources (e.g., by accessing new water resources or by improving the reuse of wastewater in agricultural production)
• increased climate resilience of food systems can be achieved by leveraging biodiversity (e.g., enhancing the genetic diversity in agriculture)
• strengthened soil resilience, while achieving a zero-net loss towards a net positive impact on biodiversity