Doug Burdette talks about the history of aquaculture over at Agricultural Innovations, Inc. More to come next week, apparently.
Better early warning needed
Over the years Baloch lost 250 acres of cultivable land to the sea, some 50 buffaloes and around 80 goats. “Altogether my family lost 3,500 acres. We were once considered big landlords in this place with farmers working for us. We even paid tax to the government. Now we don’t even have even an acre to plough,” he says wistfully.
According to the revenue department, 86 percent of the 235,485 acres of fertile land in Kharo Chhan has been swallowed by the sea. The population, over the past decade, has declined from 15,000 to 5,000.
I come across this kind of statement all the time: stories of the possible disappearance, by implication at least, of agricultural biodiversity. Maybe because I’m looking out for them. This happens to come from an article on the Indus delta in Pakistan, but another recent one was from Cameroon. There should be a way of keeping track of such threats, shouldn’t there? And verify them. And maybe — the horror! — eventually do something about them perhaps.
But wait, there is! That’s what the early warning part of FAO’s World Information and Early Warning System is supposed to be doing. Too bad it isn’t. You could argue that the fault lies with the WIEWS network of focal points. But you can’t blame it too much on them. Those forms for reporting threats to landraces, crop wild relatives and ex situ collections are deadly, aren’t they. Why not a lighter, online, interactive, map-based system? You — that is, anybody — leave a marker on a Google Maps interface and link to a web page or document, or maybe just an observation you made during a vacation trip.
Kind of like we do here. Except that we can’t, using our current system, map only the posts dealing with genetic erosion. But maybe it’s a model WIEWS should be looking at? The technology is certainly there. Maybe there are national-level or local-level systems that are using this kind of approach? Let us know.
LATER: And here’s another example.
New conservation journal coming
The International Journal of Biodiversity and Conservation (IJBC) provides rapid publication (monthly) of articles in all areas of the subject.
The Journal welcomes the submission of manuscripts that meet the general criteria of significance and scientific excellence. Papers will be published approximately one month after acceptance. All articles published in IJBC will be peer-reviewed.
I hope agrobiodiversity will be included, but I guess that’s mainly up to us!
AIDS experts recognize importance of diet, apparently
You may remember a little discussion about agrobiodiversity and AIDS that we had here some time ago. Basically, I was wondering why there weren’t more biodiversity-based interventions to support people living with HIV/AIDS. Well, our friend Arwen Bailey now informs us that this came up at a recent seminar given by Dr Tim Johns at Bioversity International HQ in Rome, and he said that at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico last August, there was “a feeling that clinical interventions have gone as far as they can go without addressing the environment and diets of affected people.” Apparently the session on biodiversity and AIDS was standing room only. Arwen found a couple of abstracts on the topic on the programme. Thanks, Arwen.
Wallacean agrobiodiversity overlooked?
There was an International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea in Makassar last December. Wallacea is of course one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, a link between the Sahul and Sunda landmasses. I was only able to find a sketchy programme on the internet, so I don’t really know in detail what was covered. In particular, was agricultural biodiversity included in the discussions? There have been fleeting mentions of “Long-term biodiversity monitoring including that of the Anoa dwarf buffalos on Buton (Phillip Wheeler, University of Hull)” as one of the papers. ((Why was this thing never domesticated?)) But what about spices, for example? Does anyone know?
Incidentally, while looking into this I came across some great pictures of the house where Wallace lived on Ternate. Another site to add to the list for our long-planned tour of the Spice Islands, Robert?