- Jeremy’s latest newsletter covers in more depth things we just Nibbled here, including perry and ancient bananas, plus much other stuff. We talked about “wild rice” here a couple of times.
- As for actual rice, the controversy between India and Pakistan about the origin of Basmati just got a bit more complicated. Could it in fact have come from Afghanistan?
- Maybe everyone should listen to Dr Amber Scholz’s ideas about ABS.
- Meanwhile, India’s National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources regional centre in Kumaon has been busy collecting germplasm. No word on whether that includes rice, Basmati or otherwise.
- Pretty cool way of presenting accession data, courtesy of Mystery Haze. I wonder where that’s from originally.
Double de-coupling ABS
Dr Amber Hartman Scholz gave the latest GROW Webinar last week, and her talk and PowerPoint are now online: “Digital Sequence Information: A Looming Disaster or Hidden Opportunity for Positive Change?”
Dr Scholz has been working on the project Wissenschaftliche Lösungsansätze für Digitale Sequenzinformation (Scientific approaches for digital sequence information), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, about which we have blogged before. If you’re interested in biodiversity access and benefit sharing (ABS), and in particular what to do about digital sequence information (DSI), it’s well worth listening to the presentation and Q&A as a whole.
But here’s a spoiler: Dr Scholz is optimistic that there may be a way forward in what she calls “de-coupling.” That is, not tying benefit sharing to access to a particular bit of DSI, but rather designing a system whereby fee-paying membership of a club allows access to all DSI.
That sounds like the subscription system that the Plant Treaty has been considering for a while. So Dr Scholz is really suggesting a double de-coupling, because her idea would also de-couple ABS on the physical material from ABS on DIS, resulting in two parallel but connected multilateral systems.
Thoughts?
Nibbles: Missouri wine, Ancient Chinese beer, UNFSS, Biodiversity & agriculture & diets, Container genebank
- Missouri has been important to wine. Very important.
- And China to beer.
- 7 things that are important for future food systems. Spoiler alert: diversity underpins all 7.
- Why biodiversity is important to diets. And vice versa.
- Why biodiversity is important to agriculture. And vice versa.
- No worries, now anyone can have a genebank.
The Economist on investing in adapting agriculture
A much wider range of adaptations will be needed if food is to remain as copious, varied and affordable as it is today. These will include efforts to help crops withstand warmer temperatures, for example through clever crop breeding, advances in irrigation and protection against severe weather. Rich and poor countries alike should also make it a priority to reduce the amount of food that is wasted (the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation guesses that more than one-third is squandered). The alternative will be a world that is hungrier and more unequal than it is at present—and than it might have been.
That’s from The Economist‘s analysis last week of projected shifts in the distribution of crops around the world as a result of climate change. Needless to say, genetic diversity will be needed to do all those good things. Investors read The Economist, right?
Investing in biodiversity
What do investors think of biodiversity? Well, a new report from Credit Suisse and Responsible Investor says that they’re increasingly interested, but that they are not (yet) putting their money where their mouths are. The reason?
Investors are struggling to identify and consider biodiversity-linked investment opportunities. Biodiversity needs to be made more digestible and measurable for investor concerns to translate into investment action…
More digestible? Now there’s an opportunity for agricultural biodiversity at least.
The challenge of protecting wildlife and nature has fallen behind many other sustainability issues for investors and governments alike. Part of the explanation likely lies in the complexity of biodiversity and its loss. “Diversity is the opposite of investors’ desire for standardisation and comparability of things,” says Piet Klop, Senior Advisor Responsible Investment, PGGM. “Biodiversity is challenging because it really is the anti-commodity.”
Ah yes, functioning ecosystems and food as anti-commodities. Can we not muster some decent arguments against this pernicious view?