Providing readers with information resources about PGR, agrobiodiversity, conservation and livelihoods.

The ninth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-9) will begin next week, from the 19-30th May in Bonn. The Conference of the Parties is the governing body of the Biological Diversity Convention, and advances implementation of the Convention through the decisions it takes at its periodic meetings.
The main topics that will be discussed [...]

Crop wild relatives anyone?
A new information portal will be launched tomorrow at the COP 9 meeting being held in Bonn. The Crop Wild Relatives (CWR) Global Portal is part of a 5 year project coordinated by Bioversity International, with funding provided by UNEP and GEF. Crop wild relatives are an important resource [...]

A new report has ben recently published by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) that highlights that biodiversity has declined by more than 25% in the last 35 years. The report contains the The Living Planet Index (LPI), which tracks nearly 4,000 populations of wildlife; and it shows an overall fall in population trends of [...]

Today is the International Day for Biological Diversity.
It is celebrated every year on the 22nd May. This year’s theme is on “Biodiversity and Agriculture”, a subject very close to our hearts and focus.
The CBD on their website states: This year’s theme for the International Day for Biological Diversity (IBD), “Biodiversity and Agriculture,” seeks [...]

Here is an interesting article from Scientific American, authored by John Broome, that looks at the issue of weighing up our own comforts and prosperity of today, and how this will effect future generations. The article highlights the one issue that many of us ourselves: “What should we do about climate change?” - [...]

Food and biological diversity - this is the theme of the latest issue of D+C (Development and Cooperation) the international journal of Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and InWEnt (Capacity Building International).
Under discussion are themes such as indigenous communities, food prices and small-scale farmers. There is also an article written by [...]

Descriptors for Hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.)
2007. 55 pages. ISBN 978-92-9043-762-8
http://www.bioversityinternational.org/Publications/pubfile.asp?ID_PUB=1...
Descriptors for hazelnut, or filbert, (Corylus avellana L.) were developed by Professor Dr A. Ilhami Koksal and Dr Nurdan Tuna Gunes. An advanced draft was subsequently prepared by a group of experts within the FAO-CIHEAM Interregional Cooperative Research Network on [...]

Here is a great story from Cameroon, where farmers who are having problems with their crops, or would like additional information on a specific topic can pick up a phone and call Allo Ingenier’.
This information service is coordinated by the Documentation Centre for Rural Development, It is part of the agricultural NGO Service [...]

A high level conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy will be held in Rome next week, from the 3-5 June. This conference will be hosted by the UN agency FAO, and will be addressing the recent issues of food prices and food shortages. Delegations will also be [...]

The staff from Seedling, the journal published by the organisation GRAIN, had pre-released the editorial from their July issue as a result of the high level conference that is presently being conducted at FAO (see our earlier post for more information on this conference).
The editorial argues that a huge change is required in order to [...]