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You established Biovision Foundation in 1998 with the aim of combating hunger and poverty in the developing world. How are you addressing this goal today?

After many years of working directly with scientists and farmers to improve production methods in a sustainable, ecological way, I had come to the conclusion that such measures can only be effective if they are also supported by governments and international bodies.

Currently I’m focusing on advocacy at an international level. Right now, we are working to ensure that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – which are to replace the Millennium Development Goals after 2015 – will include the urgent need to make agriculture sustainable and ecological. This is the only way the expected 9 billion inhabitants of our planet in 2050 can live in a healthy environment with enough food for all. This was the conclusion of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), produced over four years by over 400 scientists worldwide and published in 2008. Biovision Foundation and the Millennium Institute (MI), both of which I preside over, are jointly working to reach the goal of having these crucial aspects included in the SDGs.

In addition, we are running pilot projects in Senegal, Kenya and Ethiopia to support governments in the design and development of transformative and effective approaches to policy development and implementation for their food systems with an emphasis on sustainability through multi-stakeholder approaches using modern scenario simulation tools. The results of these pilot projects are being shared with the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in Rome, which was mandated by the Rio+20 environmental summit to offer such services to interested countries.

Could you discuss your professional and academic background, and what led you to form the Foundation?

I earned my PhD with Professor Vittorio Delucchi from ETH Zurich and then went on to the University of California in Berkeley for postdoctoral studies under Robert van den Bosch, then the world’s leading expert on biological pest control.

In 1979, I was offered a position at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria. The challenge was to fi nd a solution to the cassava mealy bug that was threatening the livelihood of millions in sub-Saharan Africa. We found the natural enemy of the mealy bug – a parasitic wasp – after a lengthy search in South America. After carefully ensuring that its release in Africa would not lead to new problems, we started a campaign over 10 years of spreading the wasp across Africa. This approach has been very successful and the problem is under control to this day.

In 1994, I joined the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Nairobi as Director General. I introduced the 4-H approach – standing for health of people, animals, plants and the environment – an integrated research and development paradigm to solve the problems in the ICIPE mandate area sustainably and for the long term. However, I soon realised the poor exchange between the scientists in the laboratories and the famers out in the fi eld. Knowledge dissemination became one of my big priorities. With money from the World Food Prize, which I was awarded in 1995 for work on the mealy bug, I founded Swiss-based Biovision in 1998 in order to generate money to support my efforts in East Africa to share scientifi c knowledge with smallholders to help lift them out of poverty and hunger.

In 2005, I left ICIPE and joined the MI in Washington as President. The MI develops capacities for integrated and systemic medium- and long-term planning with modern computational tools and approaches, such as multi-stakeholder group modelling and system dynamics tools at government level to facilitate sustainable development policies and their monitoring and evaluation.

What do you consider to be your greatest achievements to date?

Until 2008, I was co-Chair of IAASTD and also wrote the chapter on agriculture for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s Green Economy Report. In 2013, I was awarded the Right Livelihood Award together with my Biovision Foundation. The cassava mealy bug campaign in Africa will always be seen as my biggest achievement, but if I can make a major contribution to countries all over the world

Founded by Dr Hans Rudolf Herren, Biovision Foundation was set up to address sustainability issues impacting on people’s lives in Africa, while ensuring a healthy environment for all

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adopting sustainable ecological agricultural methods, that would give me enormous satisfaction.

In what ways are you promoting plant and environmental health?

Our approach is to tackle the problems at their roots rather than treating symptoms, as is currently the case. These problems include diminishing bio- and system diversity, soil fertility and lack of information reaching farmers. Our approach is anchored in the principle that you increase the resilience of the system, in our case that of plant, animal and human health, by starting with a healthy environment and above all a healthy soil, which promotes health throughout the food production and consumption system.

By using nature’s resources in our agricultural methods (ie. agroecology) and with projects that increase productivity at farm level sustainably, farmers have the means to be better stewards of their land and also the agricultural landscape, both of which provide the essential ecosystem service from which rural and urban populations benefi t and which are essential for our survival. These various projects on the ground in East Africa to promote plant and environmental health are also refl ected in our advocacy work at the international level.

How are you engaging people in both developed and developing countries to take more responsibility for their impact of the environment, and what projects are in place to ensure people transition from being passive subjects to active participants in this change?

Engaging people in developing countries is not such a problem – they are so starved for information and knowledge that can improve their livelihood that they are ready to take advantage of every opportunity to getting involved. The big challenge is to have the necessary funds to ensure that this information can be disseminated in an appropriate manner and for the long term, as development is not something that is done overnight.

Engaging people in the developed world to behave in a more sustainable way is a much bigger challenge, as they quickly feel they might lose out. Encouraging them to consume more responsibly, taking into account the social and environmental aspects of the product they wish to buy, is not easy, particularly as such information is often hard to communicate. Convincing them of the true value of healthy food from a

healthy environment and of the need to drastically reduce food waste is therefore a major challenge.

In Switzerland, Biovision has an interactive travelling exhibition called CLEVER. Visitors enter the exhibition, grab a shopping basket and enter what is like a small supermarket. At the till, their products are scanned, creating a spider diagram that shows how sustainable a product purchased is, with explanations of where they chose wrongly and where they picked the right product. The project aims to inform consumers of the true costs, all inclusive of externalities, of their purchase and induce a new sense of responsibility towards future generations.

In the context of the post-2015 development agenda, how is Biovision working to achieve the SDGs? Which areas are you focusing on specifi cally?

Biovision, in partnership with MI, is actively following and engaging in the negotiations of the SDGs, specifi cally the post-2015 development agenda through its ‘Changing Course in Global Agriculture’ (CCGA) project. CCGA advocates for food and nutrition security through a shift to sustainable agriculture and food systems. Over the last 15 months, the focus was on the Open Working Group on SDGs, a UN body consisting of 70 governments mandated to develop sustainable development goals and targets. CCGA participated actively in the sessions, organised high-level events and roundtables for decision makers, developed and distributed position papers, provided technical expertise to the negotiators and also voiced its views directly in the plenary hall, thanks to CCGA partners’ General Consultative status at the United Nations (ECOSOC).

With the conclusion of the work of the Open Working Group in July 2014, CCGA reached a fi rst milestone with the proposed goal two: end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. However, the intergovernmental negotiations will resume in the fall and the work is not done yet. That’s why Biovision and MI will continue advocating for the shift to sustainable agriculture and food systems in the SDGs; as business as usual is no longer an option.

What lies ahead for the Foundation over the coming years?

The main challenges are in the realms of climate change and its impact on food production around the world, population growth and its

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impact on food and nutrition demand with rapid transformation, both in quantity and quality. For Biovision this means that we will need to continue on our different tracks, work in the area of advocacy and policy, as well as demonstrate through projects the feasibility of a radical transformation of the food system. I see this transformation not only as a possibility, but as a real need to act upon with urgency. I also see a major challenge with the private sector, which does not want to budge from the current green revolution with high external input and mono-crop models as it might damage their direct returns. This approach has left a huge number of people hungry and poor, and is responsible for the explosion of food-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes, obesity and many diseases related to the consumption of chemical residues on the food or in the water. Clearly the way ahead cannot be in that same direction, so we need to change course in global agriculture and food systems, something that Biovision will further emphasise in the years ahead for the benefi t of all people.

The main window now available to steer a different course for the future are the SDGs, therefore it is very important for Biovision to help shape these to meet the integrated goals of the three sustainable development dimensions: society, environment and economy.

Our work on the ground in East Africa still has a long way to go. Disseminating knowledge is a never-ending process, fi ghting for gender equality is likely to be a lengthy process and so are the improvements of land rights for smallholders and their access to means of production and marketing. Therefore, Biovision will continue along its path: Food for all, naturally!

Do you have a take home message for our audience?

The time to act is now. We have been talking for a long time about what may be needed to make the changes across the world to bring about a more sustainable future for all. Going back to the Rio summit in 1992, when the world decided that there was a need to change the course of action, it is sad to note that little has been done. The lost opportunity costs are enormous in relation to what we would have had to spend if we had started to take action back in 1992; from climate change, renewable energy, sustainable water management to healthy nutrition, to mention a few. My work and that of Biovision Foundation is focused on providing a new policy development framework and examples that show a change is possible, on all fronts, but in particular on the fi nancial and policy side. As a responsible and humane society, we must commit to act now, or it will certainly be too late.

www.biovision.ch

• Millennium Institute, Washington

• International Centre for Insect Physiology & Ecology

• BioEconomy Association

• Research Institute for Organic Agriculture

• Swiss Development Organisation

• Kenyan Medical Research Institute

• PRAXIS, Ethiopia

• Desert Locust Control Organisation East Africa

• Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute

• Kenyatta University

• Kenyan Wildlife Service

• Tropical Soil Biology & Fertility Institute

CREATING CONNECTIONS Biovision works closely with the following institutes:

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