CODESU is the Consortium for Sustainable Development in Ucayali – an Amazonian department of Peru, with Pucallpa as its administrative centre. The consortium partners really recognize the importance of agricultural biodiversity in their development efforts – perhaps an unusual situation. The latest evidence of this committment is the germplasm catalog that has just gone online. It has information on cassava, peppers, beans and maize. There are other interesting resources on the website, including publications, though mainly in Spanish. You can read more about the efforts of CODESU in the management of crop diversity in traditional agroecosystems, and place them in a wider context, in a recent Bioversity International publication of that title.
Japanese rice planting festival
Ecotourism investigated
From id21, a report that questions some of the assumptions about ecotourism, and asks whether it really is an innovative conservation and development strategy or merely a celebration, by those who can afford it, of poverty?
Ecotourism projects tell communities they can generate revenue by protecting biodiversity, but also that they should never hope to achieve much beyond this role. This ties the development prospects of rural communities to local, natural limits in a way that is completely alien to economic development in richer societies.
Given that the author, Jim Butcher, takes a pretty dim view of the whole scene, I suppose I should be glad that he does not seem to recognize agricultural ecotourism at all. But there are strong suggestions that this can help communities not only to gain an income but also to preserve their traditional knowledge at the same time as making the modern development steps needed to connect to the wider world. (There is a method for commenting on the id21 site, but it seems awfully cumbersome, and I can’t actually see whether anyone has commented on Butcher’s piece.)
Images of Diversity
GRAIN, an NGO, has published a photo essay that shows a mobile seed festival that took place from 14 January to 13 February 2007 in Andhra Pradesh, India. While GRAIN’s web technology is a lot cruder than Time magazine‘s, and the content is occasionally a little harder to swallow then even the Mexican family‘s fondness for a certain fizzy carbonated drink, it does offer a useful insight into seeds and agricultural biodiversity and what they mean to one local community.
So, GRAIN, why not spice things up a little and enter your photos in our competition? And the rest of you, why not take inspiration from GRAIN, or indeed Time, and document an aspect of agricultural biodiversity? You know it makes sense.
Workshop on knowledge management and communication
From IAALD, news of a workshop sponsored by GTZ and FAO, on “Communicating Knowledge: From good practice to systematic change.” The conference web site gives access to the Agenda and Papers, and at first glance there doesn’t seem to be anything about blogs or blogging. Maybe the participants will raise the topic. It does seem an odd omission, but maybe I’m biassed.