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. A former ministerial advisor (2013-2022) at Finland’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Dr. Tapio-Biström chaired the environmental team and led the government’s work on environmental issues in agriculture. She had 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 has been 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 A former
Dr. Tapio-Biström has also done extensive consulting work for Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on project planning and program evaluations, and 1978-2022 she has been a lecturer on rural development and food security issues in developing countries at Helsinki University.
She obtained a PhD in agricultural economics at the University of Helsinki (2001), as well as two MScs, one in agricultural economics (1987) and in entomology and plant pathology (1980).
