MON: Keynote - Pollinator Power Party 2022. Online registration by Cvent

Have you ever considered the role of pollinators in your personal wellbeing and health?

Dr. Lucas Garibaldi will present research that explores the connections between pollinators and human health. Pollinators contribute to the lifecycle of 22.9% of fruits, 16.3% of vegetables, and 22.1% of nuts and seeds. If we were to lose pollinators, 71 million people may be at risk for Vitamin A deficiency, 173 million people for folate deficiency, and global mortality could increase by 1.41 million deaths per year. Further, eighty percent (80%) of the world relies on herbal medicine and 28,000 of these medicines (84%) are pollinator-dependent. Dr. Garibaldi will discuss these dependencies along with possible paths to restoring balance between pollinators and humans. One possible solution is co-locating pollinator habitat within farms, gardens, energy infrastructure, and cities.

Lucas Garibaldi, Ph.D. is an accomplished professor at Universidad Nacional de Río Negro in Argentina, is an award-winning scientist, and co-chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). He works in close collaboration with stakeholders through various science-based activities to identify changes that can be made to simultaneously promote biodiversity, healthy food production, and improve people's quality of life. Dr. Garibaldi has authored or co-authored 148 articles, many of which are published in widely recognized scientific journals (e.g., Science, Nature, Ecology Letters, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Tree, PNAS) and has received numerous awards, including the “Golden Bee Award” from the Republic of Slovenia for his commitment and contributions to pollinator awareness.