Two of the recipients of the 16th Heinz Awards for “providing solutions to global environmental challenges,” announced yesterday, have agricultural biodiversity connections. Cary Fowler’s work is of course well know to our readers:
At a time of massive environmental change, it is an absolute necessity to preserve the world’s crop biodiversity. Lack of crop diversity threatens the world’s basic food security, and it is highly significant that scientists like Dr. Fowler work to strengthen inventories of plant genetic resources.
Gretchen Daily’s perhaps less so.
Dr. Gretchen Daily is a globally renowned scientist and Stanford University professor who is acknowledged for her innovative work to calculate the financial benefits of preserving the environment. Dr. Daily has advanced a remarkable new vision that harmonizes conservation and human development. Her work illuminates the many valuable benefits that flow from “natural capital” – embodied in Earth’s lands, waters and biodiversity – to supporting human well-being.
Today she also won a Midori biodiversity prize.
Much of Daily’s research seeks to get businesses thinking about the environment. In 2004, she published a paper showing that coffee plants located near forests in Costa Rica are more productive than other plants because they are pollinated by bees living in the forest. The bees boost the yearly income of the average farm by $60,000, she estimated.
Maybe the two recipients should get together and figure out how to get business to pay for genebanks. Congratulations to both.