March 26-29, 2012
Reconciling food security, biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes
Louise Jackson, Univ California Davis, USA; Lijbert Brussaard, Wageningen Univ, The Netherlands; Deborah Bossio, CGIAR-IWMI, Ethiopia; Thomas Harttung, Aarstiderne, Denmark
Session content:
How do we manage agricultural landscapes to achieve
poverty reduction and increased food production, and also
support biodiversity, natural resources and their
associated ecosystem services? Agroecological
intensification, i.e. intensification to increase the
ecosystem services provided by agricultural lands
(including agricultural production), requires new linkages
between agricultural development, conservation biology,
and the financial sector. At present, there are
conflicting (and often passionate) opinions about land
management decisions in many landscapes, with little
consensus among the proponents of high-input
industrialized agricultural intensification vs.
biodiversity-based agriculture vs. protected areas. The
main goal of the session is to develop ways to understand
the tradeoffs between different ecosystem services, and to
translate this knowledge into action toward more
sustainable and resilient pathways through both public and
private actors. Topics will include: 1) achieving
sustainable development while preserving biodiversity and
ecosystems functions in ways , which could benefit 800
million people dependent on subsistence agriculture; 2)
methods to enable innovation for agroecological
intensification in different biomes; 3) assessment of
tradeoffs associated with land use decisions for
short-term efficiency and long-term resilience; 4)
socioecological frameworks that foster change, increase
social learning, and support livelihoods; and 5) markets
(e.g., local food systems, eco-labels, and international
trade) that increase income and stability of smallholder
livelihoods as well as cultural services. The target
audience will be from a broad spectrum of sectors:
academic, agricultural development, conservation, resource
management, environmental business, and trade. Papers
addressing these issues from a developing world
perspective are welcomed.
AgroBIODIVERSITY Session at the Resilience Conference, Arizona
March 14, 2011
A series of oral presentations by Louise Jackson, Mirjam Pulleman, Unai Pascual and Patrick Lavelle, was followed by a panel discussion "Bringing resilience down to earth". The panel, including the speakers, Lijbert Brussaard and Peter de Ruiter discussed research approaches to improve the capacity for responding to unforeseen change in agricultural landscapes. Maintenance of future options requires preparation for uncertainty, and for quick and flexible adaptation strategies. Yet, keeping options open may often be inefficient and suboptimal in the present tense, especially for human communities faced with poverty and lack of food security. This may be particularly true for biodiversity conservation despite its future option value. Three themes were addressed. 1) What are the current trajectories and prognosis for achieving long-term ecological and economic sustainability under different social-ecological frameworks for agriculture? Examples were from agroforest landscapes in the Eastern Amazon, a mountain biosphere reserve in Mexico, a forest-wildlife sanctuary in India, and intensive agriculture in the Netherlands. 2) What types of social institutions may be most effective for increasing the conservation of wild and agricultural biodiversity given changes in land use and climate? Interdisciplinary and multi-scale research in these agricultural landscapes will indicate the similarities and differences for effective strategies that potentially minimize biodiversity loss. 3) How can modeling approaches help to inform decision making for greater resilience, given the complexity of social-ecological frameworks?
Stream bank biodiversity serves farmers and ranchers
October 12, 2010
On farms and rangelands in Yolo County, Calif., the stream and canal areas with the greatest variety of plants and soil organisms have the healthiest soil and least pollution potential, according to a novel UC Davis study.
“We inventoried plants and soil organisms on a large landscape level and matched them to indicators of ecosystem health," said one of the study authors, UC Davis ecologist Louise Jackson. Read more...
3rd European Seminar on ELN-FAB in November 2010
11-12 November 2010, Ljubljana, Slovenia
The annual European Seminar on the European Learning Network on Functional AgroBiodiversity (ELN-FAB) will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The aim of the meeting is to bring together representatives of various stakeholder groups and national and international organizations throughout Europe to collect and exchange experience about functional agrobiodiversity. It is being organized by ECNC in cooperation with DIVERSITAS and the European Environment Agency (EEA), and will be hosted by the Agricultural Institute of Slovenia (KIS).
Throughout Europe, farmers, researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders are testing and implementing various forms of agrobiodiversity. At present, this practical experience is extremely fragmented and barely accessible. The European Learning Network on Functional AgroBiodiversity (ELN-FAB) aims to change this by accumulating knowledge on how biodiversity can be mobilized to increase sustainable agricultural production, to provide a platform for exchange of knowledge and practical experiences between farmers, policymakers and scientists to enable fast and effective implementation of best practices, and to promote sustainable agriculture in the 27 Member States of the EU, plus Norway and Switzerland.
The preliminary programme will be revised further as other speakers confirm. Please visit www.eln-fab.eu for the updated programme.
You can register before 15 October. Please contact Veronika Mikos by email at mikos@ecnc.org or phone +31 (0)13 5 944 944.
Benefits of functional agrobiodiversity described in new brochure
1
June -
A brochure explaining the concept of functional agrobiodiversity
(FAB) has been prepared by
the European Learning Network on Functional AgroBiodiversity
(ELN-FAB) in order to inform the
interested public about benefits
and possibilities that FAB offers. It focuses on the
promotion of the concept and gives examples of FAB-based
practices. The brochure is disseminated during the EU
Green Week event (1–4 June 2010, Brussels),
and will also be used after that for other purposes.
The ELN-FAB project aims to provide a platform and facility
for exchange of knowledge and practical
experiences between farmers, policymakers and scientists to
enable fast and effective implementation of best practices
in order to
help to optimize agrobiodiversity benefits and promote
sustainable agriculture. ELN-FAB focuses on the 27 Member
States of the EU, plus Norway and Switzerland.
The ELN-FAB project is currently financially supported by
the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the
Environment (VROM), the Netherlands; Federal Office for the
Environment (FOEN), Switzerland; Flemish Land Agency (VLM),
Belgium; Ministry of Agriculture, Estonia; and the European
Environment Agency (EEA). The further support of funders is
being sought in order to expand the Network in the long
term.
For more information visit:
www.eln-fab.eu
Agrobiodiversity takes the stage at the 2nd DIVERSITAS Open Science Conference (OSC2)
13 - 16 October 2009, Cape Town, South Africa
Author: Louise Jackson, Professor, University of California at Davis, USA
Agrobiodiversity was a noteworthy
theme at the second DIVERSITAS
Open
Science Conference
(OSC2), held in Capetown, South Africa, from October 13-16,
2009. The conference title was ‘Biodiversity and society:
understanding connections, adapting to change’. Nearly 600
scientists attended the conference, which covered many
topics related to biodiversity science, and whose main
message was that the world will miss its agreed target to
stem biodiversity loss by next year. Despite this ominous
message, the sessions on agrobiodiversity demonstrated that
researchers and agencies are clearly recognizing the value
of agrobiodiversity in the provision of ecosystem services
that enhance
both livelihoods and environmental quality. In addition to
several open sessions, a symposium on ‘Biodiversity
and agricultural sustaina”g”ility: from assessment to
adaptive management’ was organized by Louise Jackson and
Meine van Noordwijk. A plenary talk ‘Unearthing
below-ground biodiversity: Management and conservation
implications’ by George
Brown showed the important role of soil organisms in
sustainable agriculture. Finally, as closure to the OSC2, a
dynamic round table discussion on the crucial question ‘Is
simultaneously meeting the Millennium Development Goals on
food production and biodiversity possible?’ provided
viewpoints by leaders of several international agencies
involved in development (organized and chaired by Lijbert
Brussaard). These sessions were
organized as a joint effort between the DIVERSITAS
agroBIODIVERSITY network,
Bioversity
International, and the
UN Food and Agriculture
Organization. Highlights of
the program can be seen at
http://www.diversitas-international.org/?page=diversitas_osc2
2nd European Seminar on the European Learning Network on Functional AgroBiodiversity (ELN-FAB)
24 - 25 September 2009, Frick, Switzerland
The seminar was co-organized by the European Centre for Nature Conservation (ECNC), in cooperation with DIVERSITAS and hosted by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL).
ECNC in cooperation with the DIVERSITAS agroBIODIVERSITY International Project Office (AB-IPO) took up the coordination of ELN-FAB, and the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment provided funding. The first phase of the project started in January 2009 and will run until the end of 2009. Further support and financial participation is being sought in order to expand the Network in the longer term.
DIVERSITAS California Agrobiodiversity Workshop & Symposium
7 - 11 April 2008, Davis, USA
The meeting, organized by the agroBIODIVERSITY network, was held at University of California Davis. It consisted of an open symposium on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Agricultural Landscapes, followed by a workshop with the overall objective to develop integrative, hypothesis-driven approaches for studying biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes, including the role of agrobiodiverstiy in providing resilience to global change.
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