The whole of GAIA’s March issue on biodiversity conservation in protected areas is freely accessible online! Will take a while to go through that little lot. But while you’re at it, why not also check out a recent paper on how urbanization will affect protected areas.
Just do it
Jeffrey has his heart in the right place, a great job, and a $2 million condo in NYC, but he clearly has failed to consider the microeconomics of aid, farming, finance, corruption, etc. It’s sad that he may actually get people to contribute to his program — and make things worse. [Sachs has a macro background — and you can tell.]
I’ve only recently started reading David Zetland’s Aguanomics blog. Of course I agree with him. But that’s no reason not to link to him. This time, he’s taken on a Godlike directive from one J. Sachs: “The world should set as a practical goal of doubling grain yields in low-income Africa and similar regions (such as Haiti) during the next five years.”
Hop to it, World!
How to build a keyhole garden
Via Hills and Plains Seedsavers, a video from Send a Cow, the people behind the keyhole gardens of Lesotho. To every thing, there is a season, clearly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjcjCCx3BWYI’m going to quibble, just a bit. Not one of the veggies given a namecheck in the video could be considered local. Are there really no nutritious and neglected species that the people of Lesotho could be growing? I couldn’t find any.
And don’t miss the extended comment on my original post from Jack C, a retired Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho. His view:
If the outside world wishes to play a role in improving Lesotho, they need to be ready to put up real investments that open up non-agricultural means of economic development. Short of that, the Basotho themselves need to implement the educational, social, and land reforms necessary to give those struggling keyhole gardeners the option of leaving the land. Praise of their industriousness is welcome, but what they truly need are choices. The land can longer support them.
Salutary.
Micronutrients No. 1
The Copenhagen Consensus has just decreed that supplying missing micronutrients — especially vitamin A and zinc — is the most important priority for global development. The cost is $60 million per year, yielding benefits in health and cognitive development of over $1 billion.
The Copenhagen Consensus website says:
Despite significant reductions in income poverty in recent years, undernutrition remains widespread. Recent estimates from UNICEF (2006) are that “one out of every four children under five – or 146 million children in the developing world – is underweight for his or her ageâ€, and that “each year, …undernutrition contributes to the deaths of about 5.6 million children under the age of fiveâ€. The undernutrition associated with missing micronutrients in poor quality diets is even more widespread than that indicated by underweight alone.
Undernutrition in turn has negative effects on income and on economic growth. Undernutrition leads to increased mortality and morbidity which lead to loss of economic output and increased spending on health. Poor nutrition means that individuals are less productive (both due to physical and mental impairment), and that children benefit less from education.
Reducing undernutrition is one of the Millennium Goals (Goal 1 aims to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger), and is also a key factor underpinning several others. Achieving goals in primary education, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases all depend crucially on nutrition.
I downloaded the Challenge Paper and the Executive Summary of it. The word “vegetable” does not appear in either. Nor “diversity”. That’s as far as I’m prepared to go at present.
Where to find seeds
This just in:
Thanks for putting Semilla Besada on your list of seed suppliers. I noted your comment that you could not find a list of seeds, and I am writing to explain why:) As our seeds are heritage or heirloom varieties, they are not on the EU approved list, so it is illegal to make them available for sale. So we have created a Heritage Seed Library, and are offering the opportunity for people living in dryland environments to swap seeds, so that we can keep the genetic biodiversity going, and extend those climate adapted varieties that suit dryland conditions to similar environments. Anyone interested should simply email us through the website. In the meantime, I will put up a link as Seed Swap Club so people can see more clearly how to contact us.
all the best,
Aspen
You can find Semilla Besada among the many links on our Seeds page. And if you know of sources that aren’t there, please share.