Sure, we live in a globalized world, a global village. Recent events in the financial markets are somewhat painful reminders of that. But that doesn’t mean things are the same everywhere, or even going in the same direction. High(er) altitude farming is alive and well in Nepal, as Jeremy just noted. But on its way to extinction in England. Better irrigation is boosting rice yields in Cambodia. While karez wells are being abandoned in Afghanistan. That’s one reason why I don’t believe the genetic erosion meta-narrative. There is always an exception. And although you can sometimes see the world in a grain of sand, it’s better to look at the beach.
Reflections on Barcelona
Danny Hunter has some thoughts on whether IUCN takes agricultural biodiversity seriously over at his Rurality blog. IUCN has been meeting in Barcelona, and Danny was there telling everyone about the Crop Wild Relative Global Portal. The money quote:
There still appears to be a massive disconnect between the global conservation and agrobiodiversity communities.
LATER: There is, of course, no consideration of agriculture in the latest work on Key Biodiversity Areas, apart, that is, from seeing it as a threat.
The forest: back to the future
I’ve blogged before about the myth of the pristine forest, at least as it applies to the Amazon, and a long feature in the University of Chicago Magazine entitled Can’t See the Forest for the Trees does a good job of summarizing that argument. But it does a lot more by putting it in a global context. I hadn’t realized that researchers that see the Amazon as a “working landscape” are increasingly finding kindred thinkers in other parts of the world: in the “secret forests” of El Salvador, the greening Sahel, the tea forests of China. There’s a lot of talk nowadays in such circles of the “social life of forests” 1 and about local communities taking back control, and becoming “gardners of the forests,” in the words of Peter Crane, formerly Director at Kew. Says Chris Reij of the Centre for International Cooperation at the VU University Amsterdam:
“The foresters have the idea that they have to protect trees from farmers. Our own view is that forests have to be protected from foresters.â€
Website on agaves in Tequila
We’ve been contacted by Dr Ana Valenzuela, an expert on agaves and tequila who has a website dedicated to the diffusion of information on sustainable agave agriculture, and to the conservation of diversity in this crop. We’re happy to add “Agaves Tequileros” to our blogroll. If you read Spanish, check out Ana’s blog.
Equator Prize 2008 winners announced
The Equator Initiative, a United Nations-led partnership that supports grassroots efforts in biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation, has selected 25 winners of the Equator Prize 2008.
And here they all are. Lots of great stuff there on agrobiodiversity conservation and use. Somewhat invidious to single anyone out, but I can’t resist. Check out in particular the work of the Unión de Organizaciones Campesinas e Indígenas de Cotacachi.