- Livestock diversity in the hands of FAO. No comment.
- Let them eat fruit!
- AoB breaks down International Botanical Congress 18 for us.
- Species-poor tree plantations could be good for conservation of rare tree found in remnant forest patches in Chile because they encourage pollinators to move on. Agriculture, on other hand, is bad because it lures generalist pollinators into staying. Nature, don’t you just love it?
- Climate-proofing the Solomon Islands to include “the isolation of crop species tolerant of high salinity, high rainfall, and drought.” Strewth.
- Marine diversity. (Only kidding.)
- Good advice on home seed saving from Suzanne Ashworth. She wrote the (a?) book.
Using data to inform nutrition security policy
You only have a few more weeks to get your abstract in for the “International Scientific Symposium on Food & Nutrition Security Information: From valid measurement to effective decision-making” early next year. I like the sound of it. Here are the three topic areas:
1. Measuring and analyzing food and nutrition security to improve the availability and quality of information for decision making — advances made since the 2002 International Scientific Symposium.
2. Impact evaluation — understanding what works in humanitarian and development contexts to improve food and nutrition insecurity.
3. Food and nutrition security information — from evidence to policy impact.
Plenty of opportunities for agricultural biodiversity to make an appearance. I hope.
Nibbles: CGRFA13, Kuroiler chicken, CGIAR, God, Mozambique
- Three days down, one to go in Rome.
- Indian hybrid chickens set to take over Uganda.
- Latest from CGIAR restructuring: the 6 research programmes agreed thus far. So how you like our latest toy?
- 60-tonne God of Rain unearthed; drought continues.
- Mozambique Raises Production of Staple Foods by 22% a Year. Amazing. How? And for how long?
Nibbles: Gaur, AnGR, Wild Plants blog, Potato genebank, Research, Forests, Climate change
- Cattle do the wild thing in Vietnam.
- West African Ruminant Livestock: The Movie.
- An interesting new botanical blog on me.
- Who says working in a genebank is unrewarding? Technician is honoured with award, and that is not an oca she’s fondling?
- Back40 dissects the trouble with agriculture; it isn’t dignified. Well, it is, but …
- Forests are really, really good for economies.
- Andy Jarvis pulls it all together: looking forward to a climatically less diverse world.
Climate change and agrobiodiversity seminar report online
IISD’s report on the special information seminar that was held last Saturday at FAO headquarters in Rome, under the title “Climate Change and Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture: State of Knowledge, Risks and Opportunities,” is out.
I must say I just don’t know what to make of stuff like this:
On conservation, several participants called for stronger focus on in situ conservation, with panelists noting that ex situ and in situ conservation are complementary strategies. Cock added that conservation must also ensure accessibility to realize appropriate deployment.
Surely we had that debate twenty years ago? Anyway, here’s the bottom line, in case you don’t want to plough through the whole pdf:
…Hodgkin said the morning session had shown that there is increasing acceptance of the ecosystem approach and the concept of ecosystem services in addressing linkages with climate change. Other messages included the: importance of accessibility of genetic resources and availability of information, especially in developing countries; different roles of in situ and ex situ conservation in addressing risks and enabling responses; need for an inter-sectoral approach to adaptation and mitigation; and recognition that climate change leads to the movement of agricultural biodiversity and creates a need for informed decisions of deliberate movements of germplasm.
The key messages from the afternoon session were: while climate change is being embedded in many agricultural strategies and plans, agriculture still needs to be embedded in climate change measures; there is a need for institutions and mechanisms to supply seeds to users; and there is a great need for capacity building activities for adaptation, such as evaluation and characterization.
Chair Mozafari added that participants had recognized the need: for the agriculture community to take action to ensure that GRFA are properly reflected in climate change efforts; to improve the knowledge base, in particular national knowledge on wild crop relatives and wild species; to reconcile efforts in all aspects of food security to ensure coherence; for global partnerships in research, evaluation and characterization; to prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable; and for financial resources. He suggested that CGRFA 13 reflect on how to communicate these needs to the UNFCCC and other instruments to put GRFA on the global climate change agenda.
LATER: And the report on day 1 of the regular session is out too now.