Category: Pollinators

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Cacao and conservation

A whole issue of the journal Biodiversity and Conservation looks at how cocoa production landscapes can contribute to biodiversity conservation. There are several papers on specific case studies and also an overview. Most of the discussion is — predictably — about what cacao cultivation can do for biodiversity, but, what about the other way around? The overview does suggest that

it is important to understand trade-offs between productivity and conservation and the economic costs of conservation friendly practices to land users so that more effective policies can be designed… Quantifying the benefits (both short and long-term) of biodiversity within agroforestry landscapes to farm productivity, for example via pest and disease control … requires attention.

What are these biodiversity-friendly practices? Here’s a few ideas, again from the overview:

  • eco-friendly certification
  • research and extension to increase productivity while maintaining diverse tree canopies
  • development of markets for non-cocoa products
  • payment for environmental services

As far as certification is concerned, the Fair Tracing Project may suggest solutions:

The Fair Tracing project believes that attaching tracing technology to Fair Trade products sourced in developing countries will enhance the value of such goods to consumers in the developed world seeking to make ethical purchasing choices.

I’ve just come across this project, and I don’t know much about it. A piece on its web site — basically a blog — about the ICT being used to trace fair trade coffee in Haiti did point me to a rather interesting example of a corporation trying to bridge the digital divide.

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Bee shortage? What bee shortage?

An article in the New York Times this week suggests that the current scare over colony collapse disorder is nothing extraordinary. It has happened before and will probably happen again. What has been missing from the debate, some scientists say, is historical context. Records show that colonies were vanishing in the 19th century, when the cause was seen as lack of moral fibre. Bees that weren’t returning to their hives had “weak character”. And it happened in the late 1970s, when it was called “disappearing disease”. The disease too disappeared, and no cause was ever isolated.

One day we may know, and extra money for long-term monitoring (none has been forthcoming) may help. In the meantime, if the “crisis” has helped people appreciate the importance of bees as pollinators, and prompted deeper investigations, then that is surely A Good Thing. To prove the point, two deeply fascinating papers have been published in the past month showing that genetic diversity in honeybees and other social insects is also A Good Thing.

This is counterintuitive, because the reason social insects are social is that they are genetically uniform.

Continue reading “Bee shortage? What bee shortage?”

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Stamp on biodiversity

Bilde June 29 will be the day to buy this new set of pollinator stamps — if you are in the US. They celebrate National Pollinator Week, and I guess they were agreed far too long ago to feature hives emptied by Colony Collapse Disorder. I really like the symbolism of the design: “The designs are arranged in two alternate blocks that fit together like interlocking puzzles. In one block, the pollinators form a central starburst. In the other, the flowers are arranged in the center.” For details of the animals and flowers, see this news report.

We’ve recently had some other philatelic news, a set of eight postage stamps celebrating banana biodiversity, but whereas I can simply steal the US image from its source, the banana ones need some work. While I’m about it, I thought it would be fun to make a digital stamp collection featuring agricultural biodiversity, and I found some corkers at the official sites for Slovenia, Botswana and elsewhere. But in order to do what I plan to do, I need lots of examples. Your mission: to send me links to stamps of agricultural biodiversity, wherever you may find them. Please.