Climate Change & Agrobiodiversity Research

The Paul K. Feyerabend Foundation promotes the empowerment and well being of disadvantaged human communities. By strengthening intra and inter-community solidarity the Foundation strives to improve local capacities, promote the respect of human rights and sustain cultural and biological diversity.

The Foundation was created in Switzerland in March 2006. It has an international Board of Directors including six members. Since December 2009, the Foundation supported eleven initiatives and honored seven laureates of the PKF Award.

The deadline for submissions of PKF grant proposals and/or PKF Award nominations for 2010 is 28 February 2010. The Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research is soliciting groups and persons to develop and submit proposals. All projects supported by the Foundation deal with two main issues: community and solidarity. For more information, please consult “Views – Ideas.”

The projects may concern less favoured communities and engage them in a process of solidarity to improve their living conditions, their environment and their rights. They may also attack the social conditions which bring about or perpetuate the lack of solidarity within or between communities. Or again, these projects may concern “non-material” communities centered with solidarity around defending a common good or issue, if this action is relevant to the Foundation’s objectives.

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has announced the release of ‘Climate Change Impacts and Vulnerability in the Eastern Himalayas’ – a summary of the findings of an assessment carried out by ICIMOD and partners with support from the MacArthur Foundation on the vulnerability of mountain ecosystems to climate change and the potential impacts on biodiversity, water availability, agriculture, hazards, and general human well-being. The assessment builds on the results of surveys, workshops, stakeholder consultations, and technical papers by individual experts to develop preliminary climate projections for the region and assess climate change vulnerability. It is hoped that these results will both inform conservation policy at national and regional levels, and stimulate the coordinated research that is urgently needed.

The full publication can be downloaded from ICIMOD Books Online.

From 15 to 17 February 2010 in Chennai, India the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation will hold an international conference on “Biodiversity in Relation to Food and Human Security in a Warming Planet” in memory of Dr Norman E Borlaug. The conference is designed to promote exchange of ideas on the current situation in the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources on Food and Agriculture of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and aims to develop a road map for ensuring that biodiversity continues to remain an important tool in achieving the goal of a hunger free world.  The conference will also give further thought to the question of recognizing and rewarding the contributions of women and men to preserving the remaining biodiversity in its pristine purity.

The meeting is being organised by M S Swaminathan Research Foundation in collaboration with FAO, IFAD, Bioversity International, CBD, DBT, ICAR, ICRISAT, IFPRI, IRRI, WFP, IUCN, UNEP, SDC, ICRAF, Global Biodiversity Trust, GEF, PPVFRA, NBA. It will be preceded by a one day discussion on the role of fertilizer trees in improving the productivity of crops and farm animals in arid and semi-arid areas.  Following the conference, there will be field trips to see the work of tribal women and men in some parts of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Orissa in developing an integrated strategy for conservation, cultivation, consumption and commerce through community gene, seed, grain and water banks. At the initiative of MSSRF, the Plant Variety and Farmers’ Rights Authority of India has instituted Genome Saviour Awards to give social and economic recognition to the primary conservers. Breed Saviour Awards are also being instituted to give similar recognition to the conservers of animal breeds.

The late Dr Norman E Borlaug had demonstrated beautifully how biodiversity can be utilized effectively for increasing the productivity, profitability and sustainability of major farming systems. He brought about gene pyramiding and promoted a strategy for developing genetic shields against major pests and diseases. The food situation in the world today is still one of anxiety. Over a billion children, women and men, go to bed every day partially hungry. Compounding these problems are the new uncertainties caused by global warming and climate change.

For further details, please see the full conference Programme.

Indigenous peoples worldwide lead sustainable livelihoods that contribute to the sequestration of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and cause the least amount of damage to the environment. Yet, indigenous peoples, particularly women, often are the hardest hit by the effects of climate change. Indigenous societies, for instance, struggle to save their resources from deforestation and damaging extraction of minerals, oil and gas, as well as against further expansion of mono-crop plantations. This, in part, has to do with colonial and corporate attempts to nationalize and privatize their resources.

Recently, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), through its partnerships with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Christensen Fund, supported a study to decipher the gendered impact of climate change in indigenous societies in Asia with a particular focus on the Adivasi ethnic and tribal group of India.

This study entitled Adivasi Women — Engaging with Climate Change, by Govind Kelkar (UNIFEM South Asia), also intends to increase understanding of how these impacts are exacerbated by structural shifts in Advasi socio-economic systems resulting from their colonial history, more recent efforts at privatization and gendered roles within the Adivasi communities. In conclusion, the study offers policy recommendations to enhance women’s resiliency to these impacts.

To learn more, please read the full publication.

More than 10,000 people are expected to attend the Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights summit to be held in Cochabamba, Bolivia from 19 to 22 April 2010. Many more will probably participate via the internet and in campaign actions on the final day of the conference, 22 April,to mark UN Mother Earth Day.

Just over a month after President Morales of Bolivia issued his call in Copenhagen for “the people to decide”, registration opened for the Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights. You can register for the conference and join a Working Group.

The work leading up to the conference starts in February. More than 16 working groups will begin preparations on key climate issues via online discussions. We encourage you to suggest a working group on agrobiodiversity. Prior to the conference, the working groups will discuss the issues and will prepare draft documents for the discussions that will take place in Cochabamba.

In addition to the working groups, there will also be a series of main plenary events and self-organised events, which will be pulled together by participants. The conference will conclude with a dialogue between the people and governments. This will be followed by a mass event in Cochabamba’s football stadium on 22 April 2010.

Learn more information and the programme. To participate in the Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights you can register HERE.

The Hamburg University of Applied Sciences is organizing the third worldwide scientific online climate conference titled CLIMATE 2010. From 1 to 7 November 2010, researchers, companies, authorities, students and the interested public can access scientific papers and interact to discuss the impacts of climate change during CLIMATE 2010.

The key theme of this virtual conference is “Climate change and the Sustainable Management of Water Resources”.

CLIMATE 2010 is being organized in cooperation with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Interdisciplinary Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) among other world bodies. Participation is free of charge, register at CLIMATE 2010 and to have a glimpse of what’s to come!

Be part of this worldwide climate-friendly event and use this unique opportunity to present and discuss your work with fellow researchers, practitioners, NGOs and the interested public from all around the world. Submit your abstract online by 31 March 2010.

The Asia-Pacific Mountain Courier (Vol. 10, No. 2) has published its second thematic publication on mountain biodiversity. This issue was compiled in order to provide input from the Asia Pacific Mountain Network (APMN) community to the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP 10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity to be held in Nagoya, Japan from 18 to 29 October 2010.

This issue of Asia-Pacific Mountain Courier contains articles, news, interviews, seminar reports, book reviews and other relevant background information on mountain biodiversity. The newsletter, as with all APMN products, is made possible thanks to the constant support, voluntary contributions, and help from our APMN user community. Read this issue online or visit the Asia Pacific Mountain Courier archive.

APMN is currently planning the last thematic issue of the Asia Pacific Mountain Courier on ‘mountain biodiversity’ for May 2010.  We encourage you to send us your articles, news, interviews, seminar reports, book reviews and other relevant background information by 31 March 2010.

For further information, please write to Tek Jung Mahat (email hidden; JavaScript is required) or Leena Bajracharya (email hidden; JavaScript is required).

The UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) recently launched a Fund for Gender Equality, which will provide grants to support initiatives worldwide to empower women and to promote their political participation and property rights. The grants support Government and civil society partnerships, and focus on vulnerable women including indigenous women, high-risk groups and those affected by HIV/AIDS, as well as women who are small farmers facing food insecurity and exposed to the negative effects of climate change.

The Fund is a US$68 million dollar multilateral initiative supported by the Governments of Spain and Norway. The initial allocation of the Fund, US$9 million, will benefit 27 initiatives across 26 countries supporting women in the informal sector in Cameroon, Egypt and the Philippines to promoting political participation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Dominican Republic, Uganda, Morocco and in the Pacific Islands. Learn more.

For instructions on how to apply, consult the Application Guidelines. If you have questions, please review the Frequently Asked Questions section or contact the Fund for Gender Equality Secretariat.

A working document of the European Commission “The role of European agriculture in climate change mitigation” discusses the greenhouse gas emissions and trends in agriculture in the EU and possibilities for reducing them. It also gives an overview of the current instruments of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that facilitate climate change mitigation, examining in particular how the rural development programmes for 2007-2013 contribute to this objective. The extensive and low-input forms of production, such as organic farming or extensive livestock production systems are mentioned as mitigation options that can contribute to the rural economy, to the protection of the environment and landscapes and to the quality of life in many European regions.

Each year 2 February is World Wetlands Day. The theme for this year is on wetlands, biodiversity and climate change, with the 2010 slogan: Caring for wetlands – an answer to climate change.

What is World Wetlands Day? It marks the date of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

Biodiversity and climate change are headliners. At the end of 2009 a critical climate change meeting of the world’s leaders took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, whereas 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. Thus, this year’s World Wetlands Day theme is timely. There is much to say at global and national levels about wetland species and ecosystems under continuing threat from unsustainable human practices, about the likely impact of climate change on wetland ecosystems, and importantly, about the role of wetlands in climate change mitigation and adaptation. There is plenty of scope for you, the key World Wetland Day actors, in terms of your focus for the day. Find out more.