Ecology, Economy and Society by Vikram Dayal & Anantha Duraiappah & Nandan Nawn

Author:Vikram Dayal & Anantha Duraiappah & Nandan Nawn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811056758
Publisher: Springer Singapore

3 National and International Institutions for the Conservation of Crop Genetic Diversity

It is well understood that farmers’ crop and crop management choices generate both positive and negative environmental externalities. Aside from the genetic externalities that concern us here, agricultural production is associated with a wide range of offsite effects on human, plant, and animal health; water, soil, and air quality; biodiversity; and natural resources (Pretty et al. 2000, 2001; Lankoski and Ollikainen 2003; Almasri and Kaluarachchi 2004; Tegtmeier and Duffy 2004; Diaz and Rosenberg 2008; Cobourn 2015). Genetic externalities operate at larger spatial and temporal scale. They frequently transcend national boundaries, and their effects extend into the far-future stresses. Nor is there a ready way to compute the value of externalities that involve the uncertain loss of adaptive capacity, varietal development opportunities, or heightened vulnerability to disease and other environmental stresses (Lipper and Cooper 2009).

The institutions established to address the genetic externalities of agriculture are typically international—either intergovernmental or non-governmental. During the last four decades, these institutions have been revamped in ways that have had an important effect on the national incentive to conserve crop genetic diversity, as well as the form that conservation takes. The earliest international agreement bearing on crop genetic diversity was the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources adopted in 1983. The basic proposition behind the International Undertaking was the assumption that plant genetic resources were ‘a heritage of mankind and consequently should be available without restriction’ (Rose 2004). Under the International Undertaking, traditional crop genetic material from landraces was systematically sampled and lodged in ex situ collections, the most important of which were the CGIAR collections. Over the next two decades, however, the International Undertaking was dismantled and replaced by two instruments—the Convention on Biological Diversity, 1993, and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, 2004. These instruments reversed the common heritage assumption and replaced it with an assertion that ‘States have sovereign rights over their own biological resources’ (Convention on Biological Diversity 1992).

Under the International Undertaking, the CGIAR system created an international network of ex situ collections in gene banks under the control of the Food and Agriculture Organization. The network was charged with holding active collections of plant species for the benefit of the international community on the principle of unrestricted exchange. The FAO’s Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (CGRFA) subsequently took responsibility for the network, building on the collections developed by the (then) twelve centers of the CGIAR (Moore and Tymnowski 2005). Since the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture came into force, it has regulated access to the resources of the network.

There are two points to note about the conservation priorities established under the International Undertaking, and the way they have evolved under the Plant Treaty. The first is that the system privileged ex situ over in situ conservation. This was not surprising in the wake of the Green Revolution. Nor was it necessarily wrong. It was argued that farmers

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