It is 16.21 hrs here in Rome, and there’s no sign of any activity over at the World Bank’s discussion. We know they had questions, and not just from us. They must have answers, surely. I can barely wait to get home and refresh my browser, again.
Get the straight dope from the horse’s mouth
We’ve been apprised, almost certainly by some sort of automated process, ((And I quote: “I saw your blog entry on agriculture, and I thought you might be interested either in highlighting this on your blog, or submitting a question yourself.”)) that the author of the World Bank’s 2008 World Development Report, which focused on agriculture, will take your questions in a live, thrusting, very web 2.0 effort later today. You can submit questions here. We have.
African Agroecological Alternatives to the Green Revolution
We will strongly oppose and fight against such policies and practices promoted as “a new green revolution for Africaâ€.. Instead of solving the main problems for Africa, the Green Revolution will exacerbate current problems and create new problems in the long run. Their policy is environmental unsustainable, and will create more hunger and poverty.
Fighting talk from the 150 people who gathered for a series of conferences at the Nyéléni centre in Selengue, Mali, between 26 November and 2 December. Read the rest of the outcome statement here, and the conference documents here.
Will it make a hill of beans’ worth of difference? Depends, but one cannot help agreeing with the conference participants’ own conclusion:
We agreed that the real test of the significance of our week at the Nyéléni centre will be what we are doing in practice in the next weeks, months and years.
Indeed. And on the support they receive, no doubt.
Some people don’t want to register their traditional knowledge
The ingratitude! Apparently villagers in the Uttar Kannada district of the Western Ghats in India have not been entirely truthful with the folks collecting information for the local Biodiversity Register. These registers have been promoted as a way of collecting local traditional knoweldge in order to protect against biopiracy and give local people some sort of intellectual property rights. But, like jealous cooks at a bake-off, some seem to withholding information.
“People have not given details of prescriptions, compositions and the methods used to cure ailments the traditional way using plants with medicinal properties. The information we have might be incomplete. In some cases, people have just mentioned plants but haven’t revealed how they use them for treatment.â€
That’s according to G M Bhatt, president of the Biodiversity Management Committee of Heggarni. Villagers say they fear that they will lose control of their knowledge and their resources, even if it is “protected” in a biodiversity register.
They may have a point. According to the report, when it was discovered that a local plant, Malabar tamarind (Garcinia gummigutta), contained a compound that could “cure obesity” it was rapidly overharvested and is now in short supply. (That could well be true; the GEF Small Grants Programme funds a project on the conservation and domestication of G. gummigutta.)
What I wonder is, where did villagers ever get the idea that their local resources might be open to overexploitation?
Practical policy research opportunity
Good news, everyone. There’s money available from a programme called BiodivERsA ((No comments, please, on the beauty, or otherwise, of that particular name.)) You have to come up with a proposal for an international research project to:
- link scientific advancement to challenges in biodiversity policy and conservation management;
- generate new knowledge and insights with the eventual goal of use in policy and management;
- generate added value to national research projects across Europe by linking expertise and efforts across national teams.
Furthermore, it should have to do with biodiversity, and should link scientific advance to policy and practice. And it should include partners from other ERA-net countries. The online pre-proposal form will be available from next Monday, 10 December.
So you could, for example, decide to study the impact of european legislation on levels of agricultural biodiversity and then propose policy solutions that would increase the diversity farmers and others can easily make use of. But they’ll never fund you.
I wonder what they will fund.
Hat tip: Ecology and Policy.