Category: Threats

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Equator prize winners bank on biodiversity

The five winners of the United Nations Development Programme Equator Prize shared US$1.5 million and something else: biodiversity. Of the five, three depend squarely on biodiversity, one is managing a natural resource more effectively, and one educates people about biodiversity.

The village of Andavadoaka in Madagascar was among the winners, honoured for demonstrating how it managed an octopus fishery so that it can provide sustainable long-term benefits.

In Kenya, the Shompole Community Trust won for conserving the country’s vast and scenic grasslands and savannah as part of a profit-making ecotourism venture for the local Masai people.

In Guatemala, the women of Alimentos Nutri-Naturales won the prize for reinstating the Maya nut as a staple source of nutrition and this conserving the nut forests in the buffer zone next to a biosphere reserve.

The women of Isabela Island’s “Blue Fish” Association, who work within the World Heritage-listed Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, were rewarded for marketing a local delicacy – tuna smoked with guava wood – as a way to promote the alternative use of marine resources and control invasive plant species.

The other winner, Shidulai Swarnivar Sangstha, uses riverboat-based educational resource centres throughout the Ganges River delta in Bangladesh to deliver information to locals about sustainable agricultural practices and market prices.

Not surprising, really. But it would be nice to know more, and that information is proving hard to find. If any of the winners or their colleagues happen to read this, point us to a source for your story, please.

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From the horse’s mouth

andyjarvis.jpg The recent paper showing that climate change threatens the wild relatives of crops received quite a bit of attention yesterday, being as how it was The International Day for Biodiversity. But even though the champagne has all gone and cake crumbs are all we have left, we decided to prolong the festivities just a little. So we called Andy Jarvis, lead author on the study and asked him to share a few thoughts. You can listen here.

You can also hear co-author Annie Lane over at Bioversity International’s news pages.

P.S. This may be the first in an occasional series of podcasts. Have you got something to say? Or would you like to hear someone or something particular? Let us know.

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Slash and burn

Is “slash and burn” – swidden agriculture – a good or a bad thing? That’s when farmers cut down an area of forest (though often leaving the larger trees standing), burn the cut vegetation, and plant their crops, often roots and tubers, in the resulting ashy soil for a few years. When the soil is exhausted, they move on to another patch of forest, leaving the first one to grow back, ideally for perhaps 20 years or more, before being used again. A recent article from a local newspaper in the Philippines makes this sound like something to be guarded against at all costs, but can a practice with a track record of sustainable management of agricultural biodiversity and other natural resources in various parts of the world stretching back thousands of years really be all that bad? Although there is always room for improvement, surely the problem does not rest with slash and burn itself so much as with what happens when the system goes wrong because of over-intensification and excessive shortening of fallows. That should have been explained in the article. I hope it was explained to the people who, according to the article, were forcibly prevented from carrying out their traditional agriculture. When forest conservation and farming livelihoods come into conflict in this heavy-handed way there can be no winners.

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Cassava in Africa

Cassava has a big problem in Africa, and it is called brown streak virus. A virulent strain is spreading rapidly across eastern and southern Africa from a beachhead in Zanzibar, devastating the tubers but leaving the leaves looking healthy, which means farmers don’t realize anything is wrong until it is too late. Scientists from the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) have been studying the virus and have developed resistant varieties, by conventional breeding, and these are finding their way to farmers.

There’s a short SciDev piece about brown streak virus which points to a longer, very readable New Scientist article. I know we’re talking about a very serious problem and a very nice solution based on the exploitation of agricultural biodiversity, but normally I wouldn’t blog about this sort of thing, simply because there are so many similar examples out there. But I was inspired to do so on this occasion because I also spotted an article in a Ugandan newspaper (via the wonderful allAfrica.com) which talks about the resistant varieties and efforts to get sufficient planting material of these cultivars into the hands of farmers in a particular district. It’s always nice to see “big” stories from international news sources reflected in the local media.

Cassava is an important constituent of Kinshasa’s urban gardens, whose role in providing nutrition, especially to children, is so well described in a Christian Science Monitor article today. Let’s hope brown streak virus doesn’t reach Kinshasa, but if it does the resistant varieties would find a ready means of dissemination through a project which “organized a team of local volunteers called “Mama Bongisa” (‘mom improver’) to teach mothers in some … impoverished neighborhoods about nutrition and farming.”

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Livestock and carnivores

In many parts of Africa, carnivores such as lions and wild dogs still come into frequent conflict with pastoralist communities such as the Maasai because of their attacks on their cattle and goats. This naturally results in a tension between the aims – and indeed the practitioners – of wildlife conservation and of rural development that does no good to either camp. So it is interesting to read of a study which looked at how to foster co-existence between people, domesticated animals, and large predators. The paper identifies improvements to traditional livestock management, as well as other measures, that can contribute to wild carnivore conservation by minimizing the risk to livestock.