Marja-Liisa Tapio-Biström

Marja-Liisa Tapio-Biström is a strategic advisor with extensive experience in international agricultural and natural resources management development, with a special focus on climate change and food security. An accomplished economist with a strong agronomic background, she has extensive field experience from Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Ecuador.

Currently a ministerial advisor at Finland’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (since 2013), Dr. Tapio-Biström is chairing the environmental team and leading the government’s work on environmental issues in agriculture. She has a central role in the government’s programs for nutrient circulation, land use and climate change, water management in agriculture and climate friendly food. She is responsible for accomplishment of international environmental commitments related to agriculture including water, soil, air quality, biodiversity and climate change. Prior to this, she served from 2008 to 2013 as team leader and program coordinator at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), where she led the development of the FAO Climate Change Strategy and the Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture program (MICCA). She has also served as a senior advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Finland (1998–2008), advising on issues related to FAO and CGIAR, and she was briefly a member of the CGIAR Board in 2007 before joining FAO.