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Confused in Cali

The Ninth Meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Access and Benefit-sharing of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD ABS 9) has just drawn to a close in Cali, Colombia. It’s important stuff. So what was the result? Well, it’s a little hard to say. This is from the official press release:

Participants to a United Nations meeting on genetic resources agreed to a draft protocol on access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits from their use as basis for further negotiation, setting the stage for its adoption at the Nagoya Biodiversity Summit to be held in October 2010, in Japan.

But this is from the more … ahem … disinterested IISD Reporting Services:

On Sunday morning, Working Group Co-Chair Casas noted that the revised draft protocol (UNEP/CBD/WG-ABS/9/L.2) would constitute the basis for further work, but as indicated by a footnote, was not negotiated and is without prejudice to the rights of parties to make further amendments and additions to the text. The Working Group adopted the draft protocol as Annex I to the meeting report. Delegates then presented outstanding issues and text proposals, for inclusion in the report. In the afternoon, plenary discussed proposals for an intersessional process from Cali to COP 10 in Nagoya. Delegates finally agreed to suspend ABS 9 and resume it in June/July for a 7-day session which Japan committed to funding. Later, delegates made minor revisions to the report (UNEP/CBD/WG-ABS/9/L.1) and adopted it as amended. Following closing statements, Co-Chair Hodges gavelled the meeting to a close at 7:57 p.m.

Sounds like it’s all to do between now and Nagoya, not just a case of adopting the existing draft. Or do I have it wrong? This kind of thing is why I’m happy I don’t have to go to many such meetings…

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Not nibbles: on women, sweetness, reinventing the CGIAR, tomatoes and seed swaps

Notes from all over: In Vietnam, a woman working on the conservation of indigenous livestock breeds — Professor Le Thi Thuy — has won the 2009 Kovalepskaia Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. ILRI’s blog post on the award tells us more about Kovalepskaya (a pioneering Russian mathematician) than about Professor Thuy or the project she directs. But we’re here to tell you that pigs may be involved.

In Australia, a casual mention of sugarbag flies took me to a post about the Weipa mission in “North Queensland on the west side of Cape York, the pointy bit at the top”. There’s a lot more to this post than the heritage of honey and how to make good use of it; not as sustainably as you might imagine, in many cases. In any case, it is a great read.

In France, right now, and elsewhere at other times, the burning question on everyone’s lips: Are Gates and CGIAR a good mix for Africa? We’re not going to rehearse all the old arguments here — SciDev.net does that for us. But we might be even bolder and ask whether the new CGIAR will be a good idea not just for Africa but for the hungry everywhere. Maybe not …

In academe, an odd paper in Nature Genetics focuses on a single gene that can boost tomato yields by 60% or some. Sure, that’s not going to feed the world, but it might make ketchup supplies more secure. The press release casts the discovery as an explanation of heterosis, which seems like overegging the pudding, but perhaps that’s just me.

In the informal seed sector, two posts that illuminate a different way of spreading agricultural biodiversity. The Guardian (no, not that one, the one that “covers Prince Edward Island like the dew”) reports on a local meeting of Seeds of Diversity Canada. I wonder how many potato varieties there are on PEI. And over at Our Earth/Ourselves, Madronna Holden ruminates on How to feed the world. A big part of her answer: A Propagation Fair.

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Tributes to Bob Rhoades

Ashamed of the brevity of our note on the passing of Prof. Robert Rhoades a few days back, I welcome this opportunity of giving more prominence to comments on that post from a couple of friends of his.

From Cary:

Bob Rhoades was a wonderful man who made a tremendous contribution to our field. He was indeed a great teacher, advisor and researcher. In addition to what is mentioned in the short article above, let me note that he worked for a number of years at CIP, and was the author of another memorable National Geographic article, “The Incredible Potato.” He also co-founded the Southern Seed Legacy with his wife, Prof. Virginia Nazarea, who is also a very prominent figure in crop diversity. Personally, I treasure the times I spent with Bob at his farm outside Athens, and a trip we made on the back-roads through Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, visiting seed savers and conservationist along the way.

And from Pablo:

I am so saddened to hear that Bob Roades died. He was perhaps the first social scientist to systematically document, improve and extend farmer’s knowledge about agricultural biodiversity. His modest and warm approach in the field, his gentle humour, and sharp intellect earned him the respect of farmers everywhere he worked. As anthropologists we are proud of the pathbreaking work that Bob did, charting the way so that many others could also contribute. Bob loved speaking about his farm in Georgia, his Oklahoma roots, his marriage to Virginia. His generosity and ideas keep him dear to me. My condolences to Virginia and his family.

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Sesame: not an open and shut case

Lack of time sometimes casts an interesting item as a Nibble, so it is good to have time to draw attention to a FARM-Africa project in Tanzania. A recent post on the Farm Africa blog updates a sesame project. The chair of the Sesame Marketing Group in one of the target villages explains:

[E]ven though the community has been harvesting sesame for years one of the big problems they face every year is the size of the sesame crop. The villagers tend to use a mixed bag of seeds, which means that the plants grow at different rates. As a consequence they are unable to harvest a large crop, or to sell in bulk.

He hopes that by using the seeds provided by FARM-Africa the villagers are able to produce a larger crop and generate a profit.

Looking back at the overview of the sesame marketing project, there are clearly some very good things in it. Farmer Production Groups will be helped to learn more about sesame production, will get equipment to measure oil and moisture content, will be connected with markets and market information, will be trained to clean and store seeds effectively, and much more besides. But the key seems to be the distribution of improved sesame varieties, “giving them the chance to grow a larger, higher quality sesame crop”.

All extremely worthwhile, and I for one hope that the project is an enormous success. But I would feel even better about it if the project included banking the local unimproved “mixed bag” of seeds. There are ex situ sesame collections, and efforts have been made to whittle them down to core collections. Before FARM-Africa’s successes cause Tanzanian growers to give up on their old varieties, I’d like to be assured that they are already being conserved somewhere.

Instead of all which, had I been pressed for time, I would simply have written “Open Sesame”.