Joining up the dots

Four blog posts from the CGIAR today. Related, as you’ll see, but not connected. Leaving us to join up the dots. Because that’s what we do. You’re welcome, CGIAR.

  • From ICRAF, to kick things off, a piece summarizing the editorial accompanying the special edition of the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. The message is that the interaction between people and trees, in forests or agroforestry, is complicated and its study requires systemic approaches.
  • Funnily enough, over at CIFOR there’s an example of just such a study, looking at the relationship between forest cover and children’s nutrition. Which encountered just the sort of problem alluded to above: “We were unable to figure out from our data whether people living near forests are collecting more nutritious foods from the forest, if they are cultivating them on farms and in agro-forests, or a combination.” Awkward.
  • And so we come to the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative’s post on the use of mapping to look at ecosystem services. Including presumably the sort of ecosystem services the previous two pieces looked at.
  • Funny though how it doesn’t mention CIAT’s work on using GIS to look at the level of forest protection actually enjoyed by Colombian forests in that country’s protected are system.

LATER: Ok, ok, the third one is not really from the CGIAR. Read the comment for more.

2 Replies to “Joining up the dots”

  1. Thanks, Luigi, for sharing yesterday’s blog post. However, I have to note that the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative (nor its affiliated blog) are part of the CGIAR. ICRAF and Bioversity are co-organizers, though, as you might have noticed the blog post to which you refer is a guest contribution from a USGS scientist and thus not at all affiliated. It doesn’t profess to be comprehensive in the mapping tool available for ecosystem services (in fact, our introduction explicitly asks after others), nor does it go beyond the scope of the United States, which is the author’s domain. Thus, I think it a bit unfair to expect the post to mention CIAT’s work or make any links with CIFOR’s work on childhood nutrition or agroforestry generally. Thanks!

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