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Plant biodiversity

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Books
Biodiversity, food and nutrition
This book looks at how local food biodiversity can help to improve nutrition. Chapters cover the impacts of poor diets, evidence for the role of biodiversity in supporting healthy diets, agroecology, public food procurement, youth-led innovations and reframing food systems narratives.
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Reports
Interim report: Review on the economics of biodiversity
This interim report from the Dasgupta review on the economics of biodiversity, commissioned by the UK’s HM Treasury, sets out the main economic and scientific concepts that will inform the final review. The aim of the review is to assess the economic benefits of biodiversity, and the economic costs of its loss. It will also identify actions that can protect and enhance both biodiversity and economic prosperity.
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Image: Julie Edgley, Colourful Maize, Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic
Journal articles
The Open Source Seed Licence
This paper presents the Open Source Seed (OSS) Licence, a new legal instrument (inspired by open source software) designed to protect access to plant germplasm as a commons accessible to everyone. The legally enforceable licence is being trialled with varieties of tomato, wheat and maize.
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Books
Food diversity between rights, duties and autonomies
This book, edited by Alessandro Isoni, Michele Troisi and Maurizia Pierri, uses the concept of “food diversity” - diversity in many different factors in the food system, including crops and culture - as an overarching theme to gather work on many aspects of food, including genetic modification, promotion of local foods, food security, ethical purchasing and legal regulation.
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Reports
The importance of agricultural biodiversity
FCRN member Seth Cook of the International Institute for Environment and Development has written a discussion paper on the importance of agricultural biodiversity. The report notes that crop diversity is declining: today, just 30 crops supply 95% of food calories, with maize, rice, wheat and potatoes providing over 60%. For comparison, humans have domesticated or collected around 7000 species of food plants.
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Image: Sheep81, Northern White Rhinoceros Angalifu, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
Journal articles
Humans have eradicated many living things
Although humans only make up 0.01% of life on Earth by weight, 83% of wild mammals and 15% of fish have been lost since the start of human civilisation, according to a new study. The study also finds that, of all mammals on Earth, 36% are humans, 60% are livestock and 4% are wild mammals, while 70% of birds are chicken and other poultry with only 30% being wild.
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Resource
Food Production and Nature Conservation: Conflicts and Solutions
This book considers the main links between global conservation of the environment and food production.
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Photo: Glenn Hurowitz, Flickr, deforestation for oil palm, creative commons license 2.0
Resource
Agriculture and overharvesting are still the main drivers of species loss
In this analysis presented in the journal Nature, four conservation scientists warn against the current trend of over-reporting on climate change’s impacts on biodiversity. Instead, they find that by far the biggest drivers of biodiversity loss are overexploitation (the harvesting of species from the wild at rates that cannot be compensated for by reproduction or regrowth) and agriculture.
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Photo: Bernard Dupont, Green Savannah, Flickr, Creative Commons licence 2.0
Resource
Reconciling agriculture, carbon and biodiversity in a savannah transformation frontier
In parts of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa, significant agricultural expansion into natural ecosystems is predictable and likely unavoidable. This study presents a newly developed modelling tool, designed to provide quantitative answers to problem of how agricultural expansion could be located in ways that meet agricultural production goals, but which incur substantially lower losses of carbon and biodiversity than conventional agricultural development pathways.
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