The 2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership has relaunched its website. Not earthshattering news, I agree, but a good opportunity to remind ourselves that, perhaps surprisingly, the list of indicators includes one on ex situ crop collections and another on genetic diversity of terrestrial domestic animals. There’s also an indicator tracking the contribution of biodiversity to nutrition, and another looking at the area of sustainably managed agricultural ecosystems. All in all, not bad for agrobiodiversity. Must have taken a lot of lobbying, though.
Down with the invader!
Happy International Day for Biological Diversity! This year’s theme: invasives.
Invasive alien species exacerbate poverty and threaten development through their impact on agriculture, forestry, fisheries and natural systems, which are an important basis of peoples’ livelihoods in developing countries. This damage is aggravated by climate change, pollution, habitat loss and human-induced disturbance.
Next year we’ll do something special on this day, we promise…
Nibbles: Sacred sites, Pollan, Atlas of Food, Bison, Urban trees
- Sacred places conserve biodiversity.
- Amy Goodman interviews Michael Pollan.
- Mapping food.
- Bringing back the prairie.
- Urban forestry in Toronto.
Twittering sustainable agriculture
If you’re a twitter and are interested in sustainable agriculture issues, including agrobiodiversity, you may like to participate in the chat that is being planned for this coming Sunday from 8pm ET to 10pm. The focus will be education and the messaging around sustainability. The shape of things to come?
Nibbles: Moche, Nerica, AVRDC, Black bee
- Moche bean writing.
- “For Liberia’s subsistence farmers like Jeanet Gay, however, the Nerica may not offer such a ready solution to their annual hunger gap – indeed it may ultimately threaten their livelihoods.”
- AVRDC commits to the South Pacific.
- “The Victorians threw Apis mellifera mellifera out of hives in favour of more industrious foreign species.” Now this native British bee is coming back.