The Economic Analysis of Access, Exchange and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources
The Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA) natural resource economics research programme focuses on linking natural resource management with food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable development. The research programme has two principal focus areas: The economic analysis of access, exchange and sustainable utilization of plant genetic resources and payments for environmental services from agricultural landscapes.
Agricultural biodiversity is maintained largely by farming communities who rely upon genetic resources from a wide array of sources to support their livelihoods. Access to genetic resources is a critical determinant of the capacity of individual farmers and farm communities to sustainably utilize agricultural biodiversity in the effort to meet their production and consumption needs.
Assessing the channels through which genetic resources are obtained, identifying the barriers which may inhibit the flow of these resources and the impact these may have on farm level management of genetic resources and agricultural production is thus an important task in the effort to promote sustainable management of agricultural biodiversity. Equally important is to understand the ecological, institutional and socio-economic context under which farmers are operating, and the ways in which they impact farm level demand and utilization of genetic resources.
The Agriculture and Economic Division (ESA) of FAO has developed a program of work, named Using market to promote the sustainable Utilization of Crop Genetic Resources, to try to address these information requirements. The work is being conducted in collaboration with other Divisions of the FAO, including the Plant Production and Protection Division (AGP) and the Development Law Service (LEG), with support from the FAO Netherlands Partnership Program.
Using markets to promote the sustainable utilization of crop genetic resources
The program involves the development of measures of crop genetic resource accessibility in agricultural seed and grain markets for selected basic food crops, and relates them to the impacts on food security and on farm crop genetic diversity. One of our key hypotheses is that higher levels of diversity provided through the seed supply system leads to higher levels of farmer well-being and local level agricultural biodiversity. We focus on markets as it is an increasingly important source of seeds – particularly for poor farmers. A major challenge of the program is the development of market level measures of accessibility which include the dimension of crop genetic diversity.
Case studies are being implemented in five countries under the programme, each case study being built around one or two target crops selected for their importance to food security and local diversity, and focusing on a policy or regulation that is expected to have an impact on the accessibility of seeds and crop genetic resources in the market. In particular, the Bolivia case study is also looking at the output side of the market and on ways this impact the functioning of agricultural systems and the potato varieties planted in-situ. This part of the project is linked to a side-program of work called Linking Smallholders Potato Farmers to the Market while caring for the Environment (LISFAME) for which another case study is analysed in Ecuador. For more information see http://www.fao.org/es/ESA/lisfame/en/index.htm
Payments for Ecosystem Services schemes from Agricultural Landscapes- PESAL
Agricultural ecosystems sustain human life on Earth and directly provide livelihoods for over half of the world’s population, and about three quarters of the World’s poorest. Land use decisions directly affect local water resources and lucrative aesthetic values and may influence climate change and impact globally important biodiversity. In the absence of appropriate legislation and effective enforcement, farmers’, fishermen and forest managers’ have little incentives to opt for environmentally sound decisions if these do not benefit them directly- compensation must be transferred to them from those who benefit from the adoption of these practices.
Payments for Environmental Services (PES) have been developing fast over the last years as a mechanism that can facilitate this transfer and generating self-enforcing incentives for the adoption of sustainable land management, yielding on-farm improvements generating additional income and improved food security. It is in this context that the Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA) is developing a project focusing on Payments for Ecosystem Services schemes from Agricultural Landscapes- PESAL to support the development of PES where it can be an instrument for the adoption of sustainable land management and contribute to rural development- for more visit the PESAL website.
|
