*EPF310 10/20/2004
Text: Gene Banks Help Maintain Global Biodiversity, U.N Official Says
(Diouf says shared resources, research are vital to food security) (2930)

Global efforts to conserve plants and animals in gene banks, botanical gardens and zoos are vital to maintaining global biodiversity and promoting food security worldwide, says the head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

These efforts include placing genetic material in safe places where it can be studied, documented and accessed for use, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said October 19 at a World Food Day symposium at Howard University in Washington.

The United States maintains a plant germ plasm bank that gives access to genetic diversity to scientists around the world to help them develop new crop varieties that can resist pests, diseases and environmental stresses. The bank contains almost 500,000 germ-plasm samples, Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman said in an October 15 World Food Day address.

Diouf said that worldwide there are nearly 6 million crop samples in gene banks.

He emphasized the importance of agro-biodiversity, noting that most regions now regard as staples foods that originated elsewhere.

Maintaining biodiversity on farms is also important for keeping farming systems "resilient" and able to cope with emergencies or humanitarian crises, Diouf said. He cited the Irish potato famine of the 1830s to illustrate the danger faced by countries that rely on only one variety of a crop staple.

Diouf said countries should create biodiversity protection laws that consider the impact of protections on people and nature as well as fulfill the requirements of trade.

He also praised the new International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which establishes a mechanism to ensure that researchers worldwide have access to resources critical to global food security.

The United States is a signatory to the treaty, which entered into force in June.

The 24th annual World Food Day, with the theme "Biodiversity for Food Security," was observed October 16.

Following is the text of Diouf's prepared remarks:

(begin text)

Speech on the Occasion of the 24th Observance of the World Food Day

Jacques Diouf, Director-General
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Howard University School of Law
19 October 2004

Dean Schrnoke, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen:

I wish to thank you for inviting me to join you today to mark the 24th observance of World Food Day. Howard University is a special institution for all of us, not least because we have just completed the centenary celebration of Dr. Ralph Bunche, a brilliant scholar of America and Africa, distinguished Howard faculty member, and the shining role model for all international civil servants in the United Nations.

It is therefore an honour to have one of America's most prestigious institutions, the Howard University School of Law, sponsor this interdisciplinary symposium to explore the implications of this year's World Food Day theme, "Biodiversity for Food Security", This is a topic of crucial importance in a world where the population is expected to increase by 50 percent in the next 50 years, from six billion to nine billion people. The pressure is on us to find ways to feed the population, and to increase agricultural production without further depleting the earth's natural resources. Understanding, conserving and protecting our existing biodiversity is a crucial part of any solution.

Biodiversity for Food Security

World Food Day is held each year on the anniversary of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). It provides the opportunity to focus world attention on the unacceptable levels of hunger on our planet. When FAO was founded in 1945 with the mandate of assuring food security for all people, much of the world faced hunger and starvation at the end of the Second World War.

Today, almost 60 years since FAO accepted its mandate, and in spite of the fact that both the World Food Summit and the Millennium Development Goals are committed to reducing hunger by half by the year 2015, we still have an estimated 842 million who do not have enough to eat. And yet, at the same time, we know that if all the food produced this year were divided equally, it could provide all the world's people with enough for an active and healthy life.

Having enough food has been the major concern of humanity since the beginning of time; it hasn't changed just because there are now concrete cities and global communication. In fact, it has become even more important because there are more people to feed -- people who have the potential to live longer because of improvements in food production and healthcare.

As we reflect upon these facts -- facts made even more complex by population pressure, degraded natural resources, insufficient food processing infrastructures, violent conflicts and natural disasters -- we must recognize the importance of agriculture in solving future problems. Already, agriculture uses more than 40 percent of the earth's land and 70 percent of the total amount of water resources withdrawn. The World Food Day theme of "Biodiversity for Food Security" provides a wide-angle lens for viewing the big picture of where our world is going in terms of population and food supply.

Also visible through the lens of biodiversity is an array of policy and regulatory instruments dealing with agriculture. These instruments are designed not only to protect biodiversity, but to support the local people who developed and conserved that biodiversity, and to make the production and distribution of food more equitable. FAO has served as a forum for the development of these initiatives since the 1950s and has played a leading role in implementing the international agreements that have followed, including the historic new International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. I will discuss those agreements in more detail but first, let us look at the current status of the world's agricultural biodiversity.

Current Situation

Agricultural biodiversity or "agrobiodiversity" differs from the "natural biodiversity" that is the focus of conservationists and environmentalists. "Natural" biodiversity includes all species on earth -- those in the wild as well as those under conservation. "Agrobiodiversity", on the other hand, consists mainly of the crops, livestock, forest varieties, fish and honeybees that exist in their current form because of human intervention. It is a fascinating topic, unique in that agrobiodiversity includes the genetic materials, such as seeds, needed for developing new breeds and varieties, as well as the final yields. In other words, agrobiodiversity contains both the means and the ends to providing enough food to feed this and future generations.

Over the millennia, local farmers have taken seeds and animals from the wild and adapted them to fit their needs and their environments. Farmers determine which animals will be bred, which animals will be sold, which seeds will be saved for future seasons. The Maasai herders in East Africa have developed breeds of cattle, sheep and goats that can survive in their harsh, dry climate. If there is a shortage of rain, they breed the smaller animals and sell the best because small animals have a better chance of surviving when grass is scarce. In doing so, they are moving their herds in specific directions. With each generation, the Maasai leave their imprint on the genetic mix.

Humans gave up their hunter-gatherer ways and began farming some 10,000 years ago. In the ensuing ten millennia, the earth's basic food plants and animals have developed in thousands of different ways, adapting to resist local diseases and to survive in unique environments. Yet in spite of this diversity, 90 percent of the earth's animal food supply comes from only 14 mammal and bird species and half of the food from plants from just four species -- wheat, maize, rice and potato.

In traditional farming systems, farmers grew what their families needed to survive. They relied on a variety of crops to provide backup in case of disaster and, in doing so, preserved a range of genetic resources. Now, with population increases calling for increased production, higher yielding varieties are being developed. When farmers adopt these new varieties they often abandon their traditional types, depleting the global savings of agrobiodiversity.

At the same time, habitat destruction, water scarcity and changing climates in many parts of the world are also affecting the numbers of natural species, including many associated with agriculture. As a result, not only are many plants and animals at risk, so are essential ecosystem services such as insect pollination, pest control, and regeneration of the soil by micro-organisms. When you consider that global ecosystem services are estimated at US $33 trillion a year -- with US $50 billion a year coming from pollination alone -- you realize only a fraction of the value of protecting biodiversity.

Interdependence of Biodiversity

Although we now think of "globalization" as a contemporary issue, it actually has been part of agricultural biodiversity throughout history. It began with local fanners sharing their seeds and inventions with nearby neighbors, but expanded greatly with the explorers who came to the New World, bringing their seeds with them and returning to Europe with seeds they found here. Contemporary agricultural biodiversity exemplifies a global network of interdependence. The soybeans grown in America originated in China. The potatoes grown in China originated in South America. Every region in the world has contributed to the current storehouse of biodiversity. Barley and wheat come from the Near East, rice from Southeast Asia, the potato from the Andes, millet and sorghum from Africa, and maize from Central America. Thus, for everyone, food security depends on agricultural products that in a large measure originated elsewhere. To achieve global food security, the world's genetic resources must also remain available to all.

If you had to rely on the foods that are indigenous to North America, you would have a diet of cranberries, Jerusalem artichokes, sunflower seeds, pecans and turkey. It might be the core of a good Thanksgiving dinner, but the variety you have in your fields and markets is a product of centuries of global exchange.

FAG estimates that about 75 percent of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost during the last century. In the 1800s, fanners in the United States grew more than 7000 varieties of apples; by the end of the 1900s, all but 300 were extinct. In 1949, farmers in China grew 10,000 varieties of wheat; by the 1970s, they grew just 1000. There are similar stories of loss of corn varieties in Mexico and rice varieties in India. The numbers are equally distressing in terms of livestock. Of 6,500 animal breeds known today, almost one third are threatened or already extinct. This genetic erosion can spell disaster.
4
Biodiversity Conservation

Each plant and animal contains a range of unique genetic characteristics. These characteristics represent options that farmers and scientists can use to improve varieties and breeds and, in turn, provide healthier diets for all people. For instance, the sheep bred by the Maasai herders mentioned earlier have a natural resistance to the helminth parasitic worms that threaten today's commercial sheep industry. If scientists eventually isolate the mechanism that creates that resistance, its benefits will reach around the world.

The Irish Potato Famine provides a graphic example of the cost of losing crop diversity. Although the potato was the staple crop of Ireland, the farmers grew only one variety. In the 1830s, when the Phytophthora potato blight wiped out the entire crop, there was no genetic savings account, no fallback in crop diversity. More than a million people died of starvation. Phytophthora still exists, and has spread to practically every continent, requiring scientists to continually develop new potato varieties with resistance to the new mutations.

That is why global efforts to conserve plants and animals in gene banks, botanical gardens and zoos are so vital. This ex situ conservation requires removing the genetic material from its natural habitat and putting it someplace safe where it can be studied and documented, and then accessed and used if needed.

But in situ conservation is equally important -- maintaining biodiversity on farms and in nature, where it can evolve and adapt to changing conditions or competition from other species. The responsibility for conserving agrobiodiversity on farms in a great part of the world usually belongs to women farmers who traditionally harvest and conserve crop seeds from season to season. This local agrodiversity is particularly important for the resilience of farming systems and communities in emergencies or humanitarian crises, such as those that affected more than 45 million people last year. Most of the earth's genetic diversity is found in the developing world, areas rich in biodiversity but poor in assets. If we are to assure the conservation of agricultural biodiversity, it becomes imperative that those most responsible for its development and its preservation -- the indigenous people who maintain the farms, the herds, the forests and the fishing areas -- are both respected and rewarded for their efforts.

Institutional Framework and FAO's Role

Thanks to a continuum of efforts by the global community, we now have the means of doing just that, in the form of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which came into force in June of this year. This treaty is truly a triumph for the indigenous farmers, herders, forest dwellers and fishing communities of the world. It is the outcome of the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources adopted by the FAO Conference in 1983.

In the early 1980s, developing countries became aware that the crop diversity built up by their farmers was being shared freely, while crops in developed countries were being covered by intellectual property rights. The 1983 International Undertaking established the first agreement between developed countries' need for access to plant genetic resources and developing countries' desire for a more equitable share of the benefits. It also provided the framework for the ex situ collection and conservation of plant genetic resources.

The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), adopted at the Rio Earth Summit, provided for benefit sharing but it was designed to deal with general environmental and development issues, not just agricultural biodiversity. Thus, the following year, in 1993, the FAO Conference broadened the mandate of an existing FAO commission -- the Commission on Plant Genetic Resources -- to cover all components of agricultural biodiversity, and renamed it the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (CGRFA). The CGRFA facilitates and oversees cooperation between FAO and other relevant intergovernmental and non-governmental bodies, including the CBD, the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) and the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD).

It was this chain of events that led to the development of the new legally binding International Treaty which, for the first time, recognizes the enormous contributions of farmers and identifies ways of protecting and promoting farmers' rights. It also establishes a multilateral system of access and benefit sharing to ensure that the plant genetic resources of greatest importance to food security are available for use and that any benefits are shared with the countries in which they originated.

In addition to the International Treaty, other international regimes are in place to deal with more specific aspects of biodiversity, environment, trade and food production. The Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries adopted in 1995 was designed to protect the world's waters with respect to biodiversity and indigenous ecosystems; a model Code of Forest Harvesting Practice, published in 1996, encourages improved management and conservation of forests; and the International Plant Protection Convention sets standards for pest control. Codex Alimentarius is a UN body supported by FAO and World Health Organization that sets the world's food standards and oversees food safety in production, processing and trade, setting scientifically based guidelines for issues ranging from pesticide use to biotechnology and organic agriculture.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust, an undertaking of IPGRI on behalf of FAO and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research was launched in 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (also known as Rio+10). The Trust has undertaken a campaign to raise US$260 million to fund gene banks containing the world's most important crop collections. Already there are some six million crop samples in 1,500 gene banks around the world.

All of these international instruments, as well as the enacting legislation and mechanisms of national governments and the support of non-governmental or non-profit entities have a role in the enhancement and protection of our agricultural biodiversity. The IUCN [World Conservation Union], the WWF [World Wildlife Fund], the Nature Conservancy, among countless others, all work to conserve and manage biodiversity. The evolving organic agriculture movement with its respect for natural foods from unspoiled lands has focused a great deal of attention in the developed world on the fact that natural resources are also national treasures.

Looking toward the future, what is needed is more mainstreaming of biodiversity in agricultural policies and programmes, including emergency responses to ensure the resilience of food systems and communities. This will assure that legal frameworks are in place in national policies that legislate the protection of these treasures, but keep in mind -- and I say this to all of the future lawyers and maybe even law-makers in this room -- the need to create biodiversity protection laws that consider their impact on people and nature as well as support the requirements of trade and business. This can be done, and it must be done, if we are to be able to feed the generations of the future.

I thank you for your kind attention.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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