Speaker: Olivia Angé and Daniela Sclavo - Université libre de Bruxelles
Dates: 8 and 9 September 2025
Venue: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge - United Kingdom
Link: https://seeds4tomorrow.net

The ongoing loss of crop diversity, including both cultivated species and their wild relatives, poses a serious risk to global food security. Concurrently, policy and public dialogue concerning the diversity of plants, fungi and algae that we grow and consume remain widely under-informed and siloed.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) responds to questions posed by 150 member governments. It is directly linked to policy makers, and increasingly informs decision makers across sectors.

IPBES has warned of the serious risk that the loss of crop diversity poses. It has also identified a significant knowledge gap in its work and has called for work to address it. This presents a unique occasion to synthesise expertise and highlight crop diversity for the global policy agenda — also bearing in mind the ongoing and upcoming IPBES work programme, and that the 12th IPBES Plenary session is to be held in the United Kingdom in early 2026.

This 2-day workshop launches a community of practice that will bring together insights into crop diversity across diverse disciplines, sectors, knowledge systems and ecosystems, with a view to engaging with IPBES more effectively on this issue. It will provide a space to share knowledge, collaborate on tangible outputs, and set a future agenda for the community.

At the workshop, Daniela gave a presentation on The Social History of Crop Diversity. Olivia served as a facilitator for the panel Shaping the Community’s Approach to Indigenous and Local Knowledge. She also presented a poster on Subersive Seed Catalogues.