The BBC reports that the government in Kuala Lumpur is planning to give cash incentives to people who want to open Malaysian restaurants abroad. I’m all for it, Malaysian food is great. And it’s got to be good news for all those weird local vegetables, fruits and spices, right? But of course the idea wont get anywhere without a celebrity chef.
Biodiversity and ecosystem services
A mammoth metadata study of 111 different papers concludes that “biodiversity matters”. Well, duh. But it is good to have data. The study is published in Nature (press release here) for 25 October. To demonstrate the value of biodiversity, the study’s author Bradley Cardinale chose a paper that shows that the presence of three aphid predators has a greater impact on pests than one would expect from each of the three alone. In a single state — Wisconsin — this pesticidal service was worth millions of dollars, Cardinale said. Not to dismiss all the other services that biodiversity performs, but it seems that one way to get decision makers to understand its importance is to turn those nebulous “services” into something they do understand: cold hard cash.
Let there be biofuels
There’s a lot of talk about biofuels these days, but perhaps not much on how growing biofuel crops might actually benefit poor people. So here’s an interesting story from India about how private firms are paying villagers to plant jatropha – traditionally the fruits were collected from the wild, placed on bamboo spikes and burned for light.
Purification plants
A somewhat sketchy article in The China Post lists 12 plants that “can remove heavy metals from polluted farmland”. This has been a recurring theme for ages, but is still worth noting in case anyone can make use of the information. Officials have high hopes that “if the research proves successful in using the flowering plants and the biomass energy crops to remove pollution from farmland, it will not only able to help raise farmers’ incomes, but also encourage the reuse of polluted farmland, promote agricultural transformation and save water resources”.
Wot, no agriculture?
The Indian Express reports on a three-day jamboree, “Biodiversity : Showcasing West Bengal 2006”. Highly commendable, of course, but not one mention of any species important to agriculture. Sure rhododendrons and fishes are interesting. But some mention of perhaps tea or rice might not have gone amiss.