I think WWF came up with a really powerful idea with their “climate witnesses.” These are ordinary people around the world who WWF has asked to act as spokespeople, a kind of warning system for climate change, and advocates for action. One is an old Kikuyu cattle-keeper, who spoke up at the recent climate change conference in Nairobi about the changes he has been experiencing. Makes me wonder if we in the agrobiodiversity community could link up with WWF and use this existing network to highlight specifically how climate change is affecting crops and crop wild relatives. Or do we perhaps need “genetic erosion witnesses” of our own?
Tooling up
The Society for Conservation Biology has a catalogue of social sciences tools for conservation here. There are 270 items listed in the catalog, which you can search in various different ways. Quick searches for such keywords as “agriculture” and “crop” only generated a couple of hits, but I think most of the tools included (things like gender analysis and participatory rural assessment) will be particularly relevant to the conservation of agricultural biodiversity. There’s a more biologically-inclined catalog of tools here.
Information overload
Since we’re talking about blogs, here’s another great one: Agricultural Information News from IAALD, maintained by Peter Ballantyne. IAALD is the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists. Not specifically about agrobiodiversity, but many of the postings will be very relevant. Here’s an example. Peter links to an article in the People’s Daily Online about how Chinese farmers are signing up to receive sound and text messages on their phones and are also visiting a new web site, all to receive – and also to give out – advice, technical guidance and production information. No reason why that shouldn’t include information about new varieties, threats to genetic diversity, new ways to promote local crops etc., is there?