Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

“Conserving Biodiversity – The UK Approach” has just been launched, and very worthy it is too. There are many sensible suggestions, including about what individuals can do. And there’s much talk of “joined up working across the public, voluntary and business sectors,” and of “a more holistic or ecosystems approach” which recognizes “the interconnections between living things, their environment, and the services they provide.” In fact, the press release kinda reminded me of a recent article about buzzwords whose whole first paragraph consisted of one buzzword after another.

The one buzzword that’s missing, of course, is agrobiodiversity. But you knew that.

Despite all the hand-waving about joined-up holistic interconnected strategic partnerships, in 24 pages there is one — oblique — reference to traditional farming, and one sentence on the desirability of something called “agri-environment schemes.” There’s also a weird table on the implementation of the strategy in the four countries that make up the UK, which is supposed to outline the biodiversity duty of public bodies as determined by legislation (p. 10). The word “agriculture” appears in the sections on England and Northern Ireland, but it really is very difficult to understand what that actually means. And that’s it.

Maybe somebody who knows more about this document — and the process which gave rise to it — can help us out here. Was the exclusion of agricultural biodiversity from the national strategic framework for biodiversity conservation in the UK a matter of conscious choice? Or did it just fall through the cracks, as usual?