It must be the spirit of Nagoya, because following the announcement of publication of a list of threatened plant species from IUCN and Kew, there’s news of a major conservation effort, this one focusing on the Mediterranean.
The areas targeted look to me like they might well have quite a few crop wild relatives. ((Yes, that’s understatement for effect.))
• Southwest Balkans
• Mountains, Plateaus and Wetlands of Algerian Tell and Tunisia
• Atlas Mountains
• Taurus Mountains
• Cyrenaican Peninsula and
• Orontes Valley and Lebanon Mountains ((The historical photo of the cedars of Lebanon is from Oregon State University’s archives.))
There’s more information on the project, including an ” ecosystem profile” and a call for proposals, on the website of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund.
I can’t help but feel we, the agricultural biodiversity community, have failed to tap into the ‘spirit of Nagoya’, and that this has happened in the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) may well represent a real missed opportunity. Nigel Maxted (on the CWR Listserv) has rightly lamented the lack of collaboration between the conservation and agricultural biodiversity communities. Recent postings on that listserv have nicely highlighted how the work of the conservation community (The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and Important Plant Areas as examples) is so important to what we are trying to do. With a bit of strategic planning and participation in Nagoya by the agricultural biodiversity community this would have been an ideal forum to focus on such issues as a way of trying to bridge this gap and more. Ramsar, the World Commission on Protected Areas, the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, the Indigenous Community Conserved Areas network, all the big conservation agencies, just about everyone we as a community want to try and engage will be there. In the last week alone three excellent opportunities for a CWR intervention have crossed my desk. But it is not just about bridging the gaps between the two communities. There is much that we could be doing to ensure that we present a united front on agricultural biodiversity before we begin to consider engaging and bridging, instead of the fragmentation that is all too common. Wouldn’t it have been great, in the IYB, if the major organizations with mandates for agricultural biodiversity had tried to plan for this through COP10 and Nagoya? Isn’t this exactly the boat that was missed in Rio way back at the beginning of the CBD process, and which has contributed to the present state of affairs? Oh well, there is always COP11!
Danny: the only reason the conservationists want agricultural biodiversity is to document key wild relatives in reserves to prop up justifications for the failing system of protected areas. The rest of the time they are hacking away at agriculture for causing loss of species – see the Kew report this week on endangered species. I brought into use (subject to earlier references) `agrobiodiversity’ to emphasize that conservationist were missing out on (and denigrating) by far the most important biodiversity on the planet. Protected areas cover a frightening 13% of global land area (more extensive than the whole U.S.A.) denied to agriculture and definitely not where important crop and wild relative varieties are to be found (they try to keep farmers out). It is time global conservation – vastly funded by the mega-conservation organizations from North America – recognized that they are now compromising global food security (and genetic resource management) with their enormous land-grabbing and neglect or opposition to agriculture.
The ‘figure of 13% of global land area’ for more-or-less exclusive conservation purposes does not strike me as frightening. It seems a rather small percentage, and is probably focused on minimally arable areas of the planet that have escaped agricultural development up until now.
It is more frightening that (a) biodiverse agricultural landscapes are not generally recognised and managed as biocultural conservation areas, and (b) that human societies do not feel a responsibility to restrict population growth using purposeful soft incentives, and dynamic short-term and long-term strategies.
The default option of letting natural disaster, epidemic, production failure, distribution failure, land limitation, and climate instability restrict our populations is already in place. The name of this non-strategy is incompetence and impotence. A lot of very smart people have been looking at the problems for a long time, so (intellectual) impotence may be our central problem. We are only human, and live within the limits of our human imagination.
Large-scale monoculture is necessary, of course, but our dependence on it primes us for disaster in the face of climate change, regardless of the causes (natural, human induced) or the direction (cooler, warmer).
I think if the nature-conservation ethic could extend further into agricultural landscapes, then there would be more room to extend the development-ethic into natural landscapes. Lets say 20% for nature, 60% for nature and us, and 20% just for us? What are we aiming for, if we have any aims?
A dynamic balance should be possible, if an overarching ethic of self-restraint can develop in all the material aspects of human life.
Dave is interestingly provocative and I have a lot of sympathy with his frustration which I at least in part share! But …
a. It is rather harsh to think that biodiversity conservationists are only paying any interest in agricultural biodiversity to prop up and provide justification for their failing system of protected areas (PA). First, I am sure they would argue that PA are not failing, in fact the figures show that the number and area of PA is increasing substantially annually and although funding for running ‘active’ PA may be limited and limiting,, as far as I am aware no PA are being delisted or abandoned. Second, given the ecosystem services provided by agrobiodiversity, particularly CWR diversity, would we not take such an opportunity to sell our PA if we were PA managers? It could be argued that the fact that they are now paying any interest in agrobiodiversity is progress, as the two communities too often work in isolation.
b. I completely agree that simply blaming agriculture for causing loss of species is naïve in the extreme, yes we do need to challenge this sloppy thinking. It is not agriculture fault that there are far too many people on the planet and that they insist on trying to make a living and feed themselves. Also as we know traditional agriculture can create habitats for and sustain wild species, not all animal or plant species prefer climax communities! Actively managed PAs commonly require some form of management intervention and often that is achieved by integrating traditional agro-silvi-cultural practices into the site management, at its simplest farmer’s sheep or goats graze the PA to stop habitat succession and maintain the habitat at the desire pre-climax state – therefore conservationists do often work with farmers, have to become farmers themselves.
c. I do not agree that the fact that PAs cover 13% of global land area is frightening. This assumes that this 13% is based on agriculturally viable land, but this is clearly not the case. Perhaps surprisingly PA are often nominated on the basis of relative concentration of people and the suitability of the land for human exploitation – the world’s largest PAs are Greenland National Park with over 7,000,000 km2 of frozen land mass and the Bako National Park in Malaysia which is set on nutrient-deficient soils, further the 15 largest PAs in USA are all set in agriculturally marginal areas. It would be interesting to look at the correlation between PAs and biodiversity hotspots, but without this analysis to hand I think we can agree that there is no natural correlation between marginal agricultural land that is designated as PAs and biodiversity hotspots or the distribution of species worthy of conservation.
It can be argued that an increased percentage of PAs should be sited in prime biodiversity hotspots, even if that is on agriculturally ‘good’ land. However, given the global food crisis the cliché of building a fence around the PA and keeping people out is a concept that needs to be firmly rejected. Leading biodiversity conservation agencies need to look again at new ways of promoting agriculture / conservation links, agriculture is not the enemy it can often be the friend of biodiversity.
d. Given the points above, along with the fact that governments and NGOs do invest significant resources in biodiversity conservation and that the plant biodiversity and agrobiodiversity communities appear to work largely independently, for me the onus is on the agrobiodiversity community to bridge the gap between the two communities and educate the PA community in the value to them / to all of us of agrobiodiversity. We have been talking about this for years but in my view any progress has been pitifully slow – as Danny says why is this not a key discussion point at Nagoya for the CBD COP10?
I am a firm believer in using a complementary approach to agrobiodiversity conservation incorporating both ex situ and in situ techniques, but with so much agrobiodiversity out there ex situ alone cannot be the only answer. Although the systematic ex situ conservation of the 1,200 key CWR species of most obvious use in crop breeding is an urgent priority in current times of ecosystem instability. But even here for these the ex situ approach needs to be balanced with in situ, and there is an equal need to establish a Global Network of Priority In Situ Genetic Reserves to secure the broader evolving crop gene pool. Surely it is not beyond the biodiversity and agrobiodiversity conservation communities to collaborate to conserve ex situ and in situ at least 1,200 CWR species, the wild species that underpin global food security?
Focusing explicitly on the in situ conservation of CWR diversity, it is unlikely the agrobiodiversity community alone will be able to practically manage the in situ conservation of these wild plant species. In general we do not have the expertise and we do not want or need to reinvent the wheel, we need to work with the biodiversity conservation community to achieve this goal – as such we need them perhaps more than they need us! But this then returns to my original question – Why are CWR not being specifically considered when identifying Important Plant Areas ? Can we educate the biodiversity conservation community to value and prioritise agrobiodiversity within their conservation actions, can we bridge the gulf between our two communities? Humankinds very survival may depend on the answer!