6 Appreciating the Beneﬁts of Plant Biodiversityresilience.earth.lsa.umich.edu/Inquiries/Module...little trouble. Indeed, ﬂowering plants, which now account for nearly 90 percent

Appreciating theBenefits of Plant

Biodiversity

John Tuxill

At first glance, wild potatoes are not tooimpressive. Most are thin-stemmed,rather weedy-looking plants that under-ground bear disappointingly small tubers.But do not be deceived by initial appear-ances, for these plants are key allies inhumankind’s ongoing struggle to controllate blight, a kind of fungus that thriveson potato plants. It was late blight that, inthe 1840s, colonized and devastated thegenetically uniform potato fields ofIreland, triggering the infamous faminethat claimed more than a million lives.The disease has been controlled this cen-tury largely with fungicides, but in themid-1980s farmers began reporting out-breaks of fungicide-resistant blight. Thesenewly virulent strains have cut globalpotato harvests in the 1990s by 15 percent, a $3.25-billion yield loss; in some regions, such as the highlands of Tanzania, losses to blight haveapproached 100 percent. Fortunately, sci-entists at the International Potato Centerin Lima, Peru, have located genetic resis-tance to the new blight strains in the gene

pools of traditional Andean potato culti-vars and their wild relatives, and now seehope for reviving the global potato crop.1

Wild potatoes are but one manifesta-tion of the benefits humans gain frombiological diversity, the richness and com-plexity of life on Earth. Plant biodiversity,in particular, is arguably the single great-est resource that humankind has gar-nered from nature during our long cul-tural development. Presently, scientistshave described more than 250,000 speciesof mosses, ferns, conifers, and floweringplants, and estimate there may beupwards of 50,000 plant species yet to bedocumented, primarily in the remote, lit-tle-studied reaches of tropical forests.2

Within just the hundred-odd species ofcultivated plants that supply most of theworld’s food, traditional farmers haveselected and developed hundreds of thou-sands of distinct genetic varieties. Duringthis century, professional plant breedershave used this rich gene pool to create thehigh-yielding crop varieties responsiblefor much of the enormous productivity of

6

modern farming. Plant diversity also pro-vides oils, latexes, gums, fibers, dyes,essences, and other products that clean,clothe, and refresh us and that have manyindustrial uses. And whether we are in the20 percent of humankind who open a bot-tle of pills when we are feeling ill, or in the80 percent who consult a local herbalistfor a healing remedy, a large chunk of ourmedicines comes from chemical com-pounds produced by plants.3

Yet the more intensively we use plantdiversity, the more we threaten its long-term future. The scale of human enter-prise on Earth has become so great—weare now nearly 6 billion strong and con-sume about 40 percent of the planet’sannual biological productivity—that we areeroding the very ecological foundations ofplant biodiversity and losing unique genepools, species, and even entire communi-ties of species forever. It is as if humankindis painting a picture of the next millen-nium with a shrinking palette—the worldwill still be colored green, but in increas-ingly uniform and monocultured tones. Of course, our actions have produced ben-efits: society now grows more food thanever before, and those who can purchase ithave a material standard of living unimag-inable to earlier generations. But the unde-niable price that plant diversity and theecological health of our planet are payingfor these achievements casts a shadow over the future of the development paththat countries have pursued this century.To become more than a short-term civi-lization, we must start by maintaining bio-logical diversity.4

INTO THE MASS EXTINCTION

Extinction is a natural part of evolution,but it is normally a rare and obscureevent; the natural or “background” rate ofextinction appears to be about 1–10

species a year. By contrast, scientists esti-mate that extinction rates have accelerat-ed this century to at least 1,000 speciesper year. These numbers indicate we nowlive in a time of mass extinction—a globalevolutionary upheaval in the diversity andcomposition of life on Earth.5

Paleontologists studying Earth’s fossilrecord have identified five previous massextinction episodes during life’s 1.5 bil-lion years of evolution, with the mostrecent being about 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period,when the dinosaurs disappeared. Earliermass extinctions hit marine invertebratesand other animal groups hard, but plantsweathered these episodes with relativelylittle trouble. Indeed, flowering plants,which now account for nearly 90 percentof all land plant species, did not begin their diversification until theCretaceous—relatively recently, in evolu-tionary terms.6

In the current mass extinction, howev-er, plants are suffering unprecedentedlosses. According to a 1997 global analysisof more than 240,000 plant species coor-dinated by the World ConservationUnion–IUCN, one out of every eightplants surveyed is potentially at risk ofextinction. (See Table 6–1.) This tallyincludes species already endangered orclearly vulnerable to extinction, as well asthose that are naturally rare (and thus atrisk from ecological disruption) orextremely poorly known. More than 90percent of these at-risk species areendemic to a single country—that is,found nowhere else in the world.7

The United States, Australia, andSouth Africa have the most plant speciesat risk (see Table 6–2), but their highstanding is partly due to how much better-known their flora is compared with that ofother species-rich countries. We have agood idea of how many plants havebecome endangered as the coastal sagescrub and perennial grasslands ofCalifornia have been converted into sub-

Appreciating the Benefits of Plant Biodiversity (97)

urban homes and cropland, for example.But we simply do not know how manyspecies have dwindled as the cloud forestsof Central America have been replaced bycoffee plots and cattle pastures, or as thelowland rainforests of Indonesia andMalaysia have become oil palm and pulp-wood plantations.

Increasingly, it is not just individualspecies but entire communities andecosystems of plants that face extinction.The inter-Andean laurel and oak forestsof Colombia, the heathlands of westernAustralia, the seasonally dry forest of thePacific island of New Caledonia—all havebeen largely overrun by humankind. Inthe southeast corner of Florida in theUnited States, native plant communities,such as subtropical hardwood hammocksand limestone ridge pinelands, have beenreduced to tiny patches in a sea of subur-ban homes, sugarcane fields, and citrusorchards. These irreplaceable remnantsare all that is left of what southeast Floridaonce was—and they are now held togeth-er only with constant human vigilanceto beat back a siege of exotic plants, such as Brazilian pepper and Australiancasuarina.8

Biodiversity is also lost when genepools within species evaporate. The clos-est wild ancestor of corn is a lanky, sprawl-ing annual grass called teosinte, native to

Mexico and Guatemala, where it occurs ineight separate populations. BotanistGarrison Wilkes of the University ofMassachusetts regards seven of these pop-ulations as rare, vulnerable, or alreadyendangered—primarily due to the aban-donment of traditional agricultural prac-tices and to increased livestock grazing inthe field margins and fallow areas favoredby teosinte. Overall, teosinte is not yetthreatened with extinction. But because

(98) State of the World 1999

Table 6–1. Threatened Plant Species, 1997

Status Total Share(number) (percent)

Total Number of Species Surveyed 242,013

Total Number of Threatened Species 33,418 14Vulnerable to Extinction 7,951 3In Immediate Danger of Extinction 6,893 3Naturally Rare 14,505 6Indeterminate Status 4,070 2

Total Number of Extinct Species 380 <1

SOURCE: Kerry S. Walter and Harriet J. Gillett, eds., 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants (Gland, Switzerland:World Conservation Union–IUCN, 1997).

Table 6–2. Top 10 Countries with the Most Threatened Plants

Percentage ofCountry’s Total

Country Total Flora Threatened(number)

United States 4,669 29Australia 2,245 14South Africa 2,215 11.5Turkey 1,876 22Mexico 1,593 6Brazil 1,358 2.5Panama 1,302 13India 1,236 8Spain 985 19.5Peru 906 5

SOURCE: Kerry S. Walter and Harriet J. Gillett, eds.,1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants (Gland,Switzerland: World Conservation Union–IUCN,1997).

the plant hybridizes readily with domesti-cated corn, every loss of a unique teosintepopulation reduces genetic diversity thatmay one day be needed to breed better-adapted corn plants.9

OF FOOD AND FARMERS

Nowhere is the value of biodiversity moreevident than in our food supply. Roughlyone third of all plant species have ediblefruits, tubers, nuts, seeds, leaves, roots, orstems. During the nine tenths of humanhistory when everyone lived as hunter-gatherers, an average culture would havehad knowledge of several hundred edibleplant species that could provide suste-nance. Today, wild foods continue to sup-plement the diet of millions of rural poorworldwide, particularly during seasonalperiods of food scarcity. Tuareg women inNiger, for instance, regularly harvestdesert panic-grass and shama millet whilemigrating with their animal herdsbetween wet and dry-season pastures. Inrural northeast Thailand, wild foods gath-ered from forests and field margins makeup half of all food eaten by villagers dur-ing the rainy season. In the city of Iquitosin the Peruvian Amazon, fruits of nearly60 species of wild trees, shrubs, and vinesare sold in the city produce markets.Residents in the surrounding countrysideare estimated to obtain a tenth of theirentire diet from wild-harvested fruits.10

For the last 5–10 millennia, we haveactively cultivated the bulk of our food.Agriculture arose independently in manydifferent regions, as people graduallylived closer together, became lessnomadic, and focused their food produc-tion on plants that were amenable torepeated sowing and harvesting. In the1920s the legendary Russian plant explor-er Nikolai Vavilov identified geographiccenters of crop diversity, including

Mesoamerica, the central Andes, theMediterranean Basin, the Near East, high-land Ethiopia, and eastern China. He alsoinferred correctly that most centers cor-respond to where crops were first domes-ticated. For instance, native Andean farm-ers not only brought seven differentspecies of wild potatoes into cultivation,they also domesticated common beans,lima beans, passion fruit, quinoa andamaranths (both grains), and a host of lit-tle-known tuber and leaf crops such asoca, ulluco, and tarwi—more than 25species of food plants in all.11

Over the millennia, farmers havedeveloped a wealth of distinctive varietieswithin crops by selecting and replantingseeds and cuttings from uniquely favor-able individual plants—perhaps one thatmatured slightly sooner than others, wasunusually resistant to pests, or possessed adistinctive color or taste. Subsistencefarmers have always been acutely attentiveto such varietal diversity because it helpsthem cope with variability in their envi-ronment, and for most major crops, farm-ers have developed thousands of folk vari-eties, or “landraces.” India alone, forinstance, probably had at least 30,000 ricelandraces earlier this century.12

On-farm crop selection remains vital indeveloping countries, where farmers con-tinue to save 80–90 percent of their ownseed supplies. In industrial nations, bycontrast, the seed supply process hasbecome increasingly centralized duringthis century, as professional plant breed-ers have taken up the job of crop improve-ment and as corporations have assumedresponsibility for supplying seeds. Thepower and promise of scientifically basedplant breeding was confirmed by the1930s, when the first commercial hybridcorn was marketed by the Pioneer Hi-Bred Company. Hybrids are favored byseed supply companies because they tendto be especially high-yielding (the bottomline for commercial farming) andbecause “second-generation” hybrid seeds


do not retain the traits of their parents.This means that farmers must purchasehybrid seed anew from the supplierrather than saving their own stock. Somefarmers have also been legally disenfran-chised from seed-saving; under EuropeanUnion law, it is now illegal for farmers tosave and replant seed from plant varietiesthat have been patented by breeders.13

Although farmers can now purchaseand plant seeds genetically engineeredwith the latest molecular techniques, theproductivity of our food supply stilldepends on the plant diversity main-tained by wildlands and traditional agri-cultural practices. Wild relatives of cropscontinue be used by breeders as sourcesof disease resistance, vigor, and othertraits that produce billions of dollars inbenefits to global agriculture. Imaginegiving up sugarcane, strawberries, toma-toes, and wine grapes; none of these cropscould be grown commercially without thegenetic contribution of their respectivewild relatives. With the rescue mission oftheir wild kin now under way, we can alsoplace potatoes on this list.14

Traditional crop varieties are equallyindispensable for global food security.Subsistence farmers around the worldcontinue to grow primarily either land-races or locally adapted versions of pro-fessionally bred seed. Such small-scaleagriculture produces 15–20 percent ofthe world’s food supply, is predominantlyperformed by women, and provides thedaily sustenance of roughly 1.4 billionrural poor. Moreover, landraces have con-tributed the genetic infrastructure of theintensively bred crop varieties that feedthe rest of us. More than one third of the

U.S. wheat crop owes its productivity tolandrace genes from Asia and otherregions, a contribution worth at least$500 million annually.15

As we enter the next millennium, agri-cultural biodiversity faces an uncertainfuture. The availability of wild foods andpopulations of many wild relatives ofcrops is declining as wildlands are con-verted to human-dominated habitats andas hedgerows, fallow fields, and other sec-ondary habitats decline within traditionalagricultural landscapes. In the UnitedStates, two thirds of all rare and endan-gered plants are close relatives of cultivat-ed species. If these species go extinct, apool of potentially crucial future benefitsfor global agriculture will also vanish.16

There is also grave concern for the oldcrop landraces. By volume, the world’sfarmers now grow more sorghum,spinach, apples, and other crops than everbefore, but they grow fewer varieties ofeach crop. Crop diversity in industrialnations has undergone a massive turnoverthis century; the proportion of varietiesgrown in the United States before 1904but no longer present in either commer-cial agriculture or any major seed storagefacility ranges from 81 percent for toma-toes to over 90 percent for peas and cab-bages. Figures are less comprehensive fordeveloping countries, but China is esti-mated to have gone from growing 10,000wheat varieties in 1949 to only 1,000 bythe 1970s, while just 20 percent of thecorn varieties cultivated in Mexico in the1930s can still be found there—an alarm-ing decline for the cradle of corn.17

Crop varieties are lost for many reasons.Sometimes an extended drought destroysharvests and farmers must consume theirplanting seed stocks just to survive. Long-term climate change can also be a prob-lem. In Senegal, two decades of below-nor-mal rainfall created a growing season tooshort for traditional rice varieties to pro-duce good yields. When fast-maturing ricecultivars became available through devel-


Traditional crop varieties are indis-pensable for global food security.

opment aid programs, women farmersrapidly adopted them because of thegreater harvest security they offered.18

In the majority of cases, however, farm-ers voluntarily abandon traditional seedswhen they adopt new varieties, changeagricultural practices, or move out offarming altogether. In industrial coun-tries, crop diversity has declined in con-cert with the steady commercializationand consolidation of agriculture this cen-tury: fewer family farmers, and fewer seedcompanies offering fewer varieties forsale, mean fewer crop varieties planted infields or saved after harvest. The seed sup-ply industry is now dominated by multi-national corporations; increasingly, thesame companies that sell fertilizers andpesticides to farmers now also promoteseeds bred to use those products.19

In most developing countries, diversitylosses were minimal until the 1960s, whenthe famed international agriculturaldevelopment program known as theGreen Revolution introduced new high-yielding varieties of wheat, rice, corn, andother major crops. Developed to boostfood self-sufficiency in famine-pronecountries, the Green Revolution varietieswere widely distributed, often with gov-ernment subsidies to encourage theiradoption, and displaced landraces frommany prime farmland areas.20

In areas where agriculture is highlymechanized and commercialized, cropsnow exhibit what the U.N. Food andAgriculture Organization (FAO) politelycalls an “impressively uniform” geneticbase. A survey of nine major crops in theNetherlands found that the three mostpopular varieties for each crop covered81–99 percent of the respective areasplanted. Such patterns have also emergedon much of the developing world’s primefarmland. One single wheat variety blan-keted 67 percent of Bangladesh’s wheatacreage in 1983 and 30 percent of India’sthe following year.21

The ecological risks we take in adopt-

ing such genetic uniformity are enor-mous, and keeping them at bay requiresan extensive infrastructure of agriculturalscientists and extension workers—as wellas all too frequent applications of pesti-cides and other potent agrochemicals. Aparticularly heavy burden falls on profes-sional plant breeders, who are nowengaged in a relay race to develop evermore robust crop varieties before thosealready in monoculture succumb to evolv-ing pests and diseases, or to changingenvironmental conditions.22

Breeders started this race earlier thiscentury with a tremendous geneticendowment at their disposal, courtesy ofnature and generations of subsistencefarmers. Despite major losses, this well-spring is still far from empty—estimatesare that plant breeders have used only asmall fraction of the varietal diversity pre-sent in crop gene banks (facilities thatstore seeds under cold, dry conditionsthat can maintain seed viability fordecades). At the same time, we can neverbe sure that what is already stored willcover all our future needs. When grassystunt virus began attacking high-yieldingAsian rices in the 1970s, breeders locatedgenetic resistance to the disease in only asingle collection of one population of awild rice species in Uttar Pradesh, India—and that population has never beenfound again since. Conserving and rein-vigorating biodiversity in agriculturallandscapes remains essential for achiev-ing global food security.23

OF MEDICINES AND

MATERIAL GOODS

In a doctor’s office in Germany, a mandiagnosed with hypertension is prescribedreserpine, a drug from the Asian snakerootplant. In a small town in India, a womancomplaining of stomach pains visits an


Ayurvedic healer, and receives a soothingand effective herbal tea as part of her treat-ment. In a California suburb, a headachesufferer unseals a bottle of aspirin, a com-pound originally isolated from Europeanwillow trees and meadow herbs.24

People everywhere rely on plants forstaying healthy and extending the qualityand length of their lives. One quarter ofthe prescription drugs marketed in NorthAmerica and Europe contain active ingre-dients derived from plants. Plant-baseddrugs are part of standard medical proce-dures for treating heart conditions, child-hood leukemia, lymphatic cancer, glauco-ma, and many other serious illnesses.Worldwide, the over-the-counter value ofthese drugs is estimated at more than $40billion annually. Major pharmaceuticalcompanies and institutions such as theU.S. National Cancer Institute implementplant screening programs as a primarymeans of identifying new drugs.25

The World Health Organization esti-mates that 3.5 billion people in develop-ing countries rely on plant-based medi-cine for their primary health care.Ayurvedic and other traditional healers inSouth Asia use at least 1,800 differentplant species in treatments and are regu-larly consulted by some 800 million peo-ple. In China, where medicinal plant usegoes back at least four millennia, healersemploy more than 5,000 plant species. Atleast 89 plant-derived commercial drugsused in industrial countries were original-ly discovered by folk healers, many ofwhom are women. Traditional medicineis particularly important for poor andrural residents, who typically are not wellserved by formal health care systems.Recent evidence suggests that when eco-nomic woes and structural adjustmentprograms restrict governments’ abilitiesto provide health care, urban and evenmiddle-class residents of developingcountries also turn to more affordable tra-ditional medicinal experts.26

Traditional herbal therapies are grow-

ing rapidly in popularity in industrialcountries as well. FAO estimates thatbetween 4,000 and 6,000 species of medi-cinal plants are traded internationally,with China accounting for about 30 per-cent of all such exports. In 1992, thebooming U.S. retail market for herbalmedicines reached nearly $1.5 billion,and the European market is even larger.27

Despite their demonstrable value,medicinal plants are declining in manyareas. Human alteration of forests andother habitats all too often eliminatessites rich in wild medicinal plants. Thiscreates an immediate problem for folkhealers when they can no longer find theplants they need for performing certaincures—a problem commonly lamented byindigenous herbalists in eastern Panama,among others. Moreover, strong con-sumer demand and inadequate oversightof harvesting levels and practices meanthat wild-gathered medicinal plants arecommonly overexploited.28

In Cameroon, for example, the bark ofthe African cherry is highly esteemed bytraditional healers, but most of the coun-try’s harvest is exported to WesternEurope, where African cherry is a princi-pal treatment for prostate disorders. Inrecent years Cameroon has been the lead-ing supplier of African cherry bark tointernational markets, but clearance ofthe tree’s montane forest habitat, com-bined with the inability of the govern-ment forestry department to manage theharvest, has led to widespread, wantondestruction of cherry stands.29

In addition to the immediate losses,every dismantling of a unique habitat rep-resents a loss of future drugs and medi-cines, particularly in species-rich habitatslike tropical forests. Fewer than 1 percentof all plant species have been screened bychemists to see what bioactive compoundsthey may contain. The nearly 50 drugsalready derived from tropical rainforestplants are estimated to represent only 12percent of the medically useful compounds



waiting to be discovered in rainforests.30

Most tragically of all, many rural soci-eties are rapidly losing their culturalknowledge about medicinal plants. Incommunities undergoing accelerated west-ernization, fewer young people are inter-ested in learning about traditional healingplants and how to use them. From Samoato Suriname, most herbalists and healersare elderly, and few have apprentices study-ing to take their place. Ironically, as thisdecline has accelerated, there has been aresurgent interest in ethnobotany—thestudy of how people classify, conceptualize,and use plants—and other fields of studyrelated to traditional medicinal plant use.Professional ethnobotanists surveyingmedicinal plants used by different culturesare racing against time to document tradi-tional knowledge before it vanishes with itslast elderly practitioners.31

For the one quarter of humanity wholive at or near subsistence levels, plantdiversity offers more than just food secu-rity and health care—it also provides aroof over their heads, cooks their food,provides eating utensils, and on averagemeets about 90 percent of their materialneeds. Consider palms: temperate zonedwellers may think of palm trees primari-ly as providing an occasional coconut orthe backdrop to an idyllic island vacation,but tropical peoples have a different per-spective. The babassu palm from the east-ern Amazon Basin has more than 35 dif-ferent uses—construction material, oiland fiber source, game attractant, even asan insect repellent. Commercial extrac-tion of babassu products is a part or full-time economic activity for more than 2million rural Brazilians.32

Indigenous peoples throughout tropi-cal America have been referred to as“palm cultures.” The posts, floors, walls,and beams of their houses are made fromthe wood of palm trunks, while the roofsare thatched with palm leaves. They usebaskets and sacks woven from palm leavesto store household items, including

food—which may itself be palm fruits,palm hearts (the young growing shoot ofthe plant), or wild game hunted withweapons made from palm stems andleaves. At night, family members will like-ly drift off to sleep in hammocks wovenfrom palm fibers. When people die, theymay be buried in a coffin carved from apalm trunk.33

Palms are exceptionally versatile, butthey are only part of the spectrum of use-ful plants in biodiverse environments. Innorthwest Ecuador, indigenous culturesthat practice shifting agriculture usemore than 900 plant species to meet theirmaterial, medicinal, and food needs;halfway around the world, Dusun andIban communities in the rainforests ofcentral Borneo use a similar total ofplants in their daily lives. People who aremore integrated into regional and nation-al economies tend to use fewer plants, butstill commonly depend on plant diversityfor household uses and to generate cashincome. In India, at least 5.7 million peo-ple make a living harvesting nontimberforest products, a trade that accounts fornearly half the revenues earned by Indianstate forests.34

Those of us who live in manicured sub-urbs or urban concrete jungles may meetmore of our material needs with metalsand plastics, but plant diversity stillenriches our lives. Artisans who craftmusical instruments or furniture, forinstance, value the unique acoustic quali-ties and appearances of the different trop-ical and temperate hardwoods that theywork with—aspects of biodiversity that

One quarter of the prescription drugsmarketed in North America andEurope contain active ingredientsderived from plants.

ultimately benefit anyone who listens toclassical music or purchases handcraftedfurniture. Among the nonfood plantstraded internationally on commercial lev-els are at least 200 species of timber trees,42 plants producing essential oils, 66species yielding latexes or gums, and 13species used as dyes and colorants.35

As with medicinals, the value that plantresources have for handicraft production,industrial use, or household needs hasoften not prevented their local or region-al decline. One of the most valuable nontimber forest products is rattan, aflexible cane obtained from a number of species of vine-like palms that can growup to 185 meters long. Asian rattan palms support an international furniture-making industry worth $3.5–6.5 billionannually. Unfortunately, rattan stocks aredeclining throughout much of tropicalAsia because of the loss of native rain-forest and overharvesting. In the past few years, some Asian furniture makershave even begun importing rattan sup-plies from Nigeria and other centralAfrican countries.36

On a global level, declines of wildplants related to industrial crops such ascotton or plantation-grown timber couldone day limit our ability to cultivate thosecommodities by shrinking the gene poolsneeded for breeding new crops. Morelocally, declines of materially usefulspecies mean life gets harder and tougherin the short term. When a tree speciesfavored for firewood is overharvested,women must walk longer to collect theirfamily’s fuel supply, make due with aninferior species that does not burn as well,or spend scarce money purchasing fuelfrom vendors. When a fiber plant collect-ed for sale to handicraft producersbecomes scarce, it is harder for collectorsto earn an income that could help payschool fees for their children. Whether weare rich or poor, biodiversity enhancesthe quality of our lives—and many peoplealready feel its loss.

BIO-UNIFORMITY RISING

The cumulative effects of human activitieson Earth are evident not just in declinesin particular species, but in the increas-ingly tattered state of entire ecosystemsand landscapes—and when large-scaleecological processes begin to break down,conservation and management becomeall the more complicated. Take the prob-lem of habitat fragmentation, whenundisturbed wildlands are reduced topatchwork, island-like remnants of theirformer selves. Natural islands in oceans orlarge lakes tend to be impoverished inspecies; their smaller area means theyusually do not develop the ecologicalcomplexity and diversity characteristic ofmore extensive mainland areas. More-over, when an island population of aspecies is eradicated, it is harder for adja-cent mainland populations to recolonizeand replace it.37

As a result, when development—large-scale agriculture, settlements, roads—sprawls across landscapes, remaining habi-tat fragments usually behave like theislands they have become: they lose species.In western Ecuador, the Río PalenqueScience Center protects a square-kilometerremnant of the lowland rainforest that covered the region a mere three decadesago; now the center is an island amid cattlepasture and oil palm plantations. Twenty-four species of orchids, bromeliads, andother plants at Río Palenque have alreadysuccumbed to the “island effect” and canno longer be found there. One vanishedspecies, an understory shrub, has neverbeen recorded anywhere else and is presumed extinct.38

Even with these drawbacks, small areasof native habitat can have enormous con-servation value when they are all that isleft of a unique plant community or rarehabitat. But waiting to protect them untilonly patches remain carries an unmistak-able tradeoff: smaller holdings require


more-intensive management than largerones. In smaller reserves, managers oftenmust simulate natural disturbances (suchas prescribed burns to maintain fire-adapted vegetation); provide pollination,seed dispersal, and pest control servicesin place of vanished animals; reintroducedesirable native species when they disap-pear from a site (perhaps due to a seriesof poor breeding seasons); and performother duties the original ecosystem oncedid free of charge. Governments and soci-eties that are unwilling or unable to shoul-der these management costs will soonfind that the biodiversity they intended toprotect with nature reserves has vanishedfrom within them.39

Invasive species that crowd out nativeflora and fauna are one of the biggestheadaches for managing biodiversity indisturbed landscapes. In certain suscepti-ble habitats, such as oceanic islands andsubtropical heathlands, controlling inva-sives may be the single biggest manage-ment challenge. South Africa has one ofthe largest invasive species problems ofany nation, and has a great deal at stake:the fynbos heathlands and montane for-est of the country’s Cape region holdmore plant species—8,600, most of themendemic—in a smaller area than any-where else on Earth. Fortunately, SouthAfricans are increasingly aware of thethreat that exotics pose, and in 1996 thegovernment initiated a program to fightinvasives with handsaw and hoe. Some40,000 people are employed to cut andclear Australian eucalypts, CentralAmerican pines, and other unwantedguests in natural areas. It is a measure ofthe scale and severity of the invasive prob-lem that this effort is South Africa’s singlelargest public works program.40

Large-scale ecological alterations alsohave great potential to combine theireffects in unpredictable and damagingways. For instance, much of the world isnow saturated in nitrogen compounds(an essential element required by all

plants for growth and development)because of our overuse of nitrogen-basedsynthetic fertilizers and fossil fuels.Studies of North American prairies foundthat the plants that responded best toexcess nitrogen tended to be weedy inva-sives, not the diverse native prairie flora.Likewise, plant and animal speciesalready pressed for survival in fragmentedlandscapes may also have to contend withaltered rainfall patterns, temperatureranges, seasonal timing, and other effectsof global climate change.41

Already, scientists are detecting whatcould be the first fingerprints of analtered global atmosphere on plant com-munities. Data from tropical forestresearch plots worldwide indicate that therate at which rainforest trees die andreplace each other, called the turnoverrate, has increased steadily since the1950s. This suggests that the forests understudy are becoming “younger,” increas-ingly dominated by faster-growing, short-er-lived trees and woody vines—exactlythe kinds of plants expected to thrive in acarbon dioxide–rich world with moreextreme weather events. Without majorreductions in global carbon emissions,forest turnover rates will likely rise fur-ther, and over time could push to extinc-tion many slower-growing tropical hard-wood tree species that cannot compete ina carbon-enriched environment.42

Global trends are shaping a botanicalworld that is most striking in its greateruniformity. The richly textured mix ofnative plant communities that evolved


Scientists are already detecting whatcould be the first fingerprints of analtered global atmosphere on plantcommunities.

over thousands of years is increasinglyfrayed, replaced by extensive areas underintensive cultivation or heavy grazing,lands devoted to settlements or industrialactivities, and secondary habitats—partially disturbed areas dominated byshorter-lived, “weedy,” often non-nativespecies. A 1994 mapping study by the organization Conservation Inter-national estimated that nearly three quar-ters of our planet’s habitable land surface (that which is not bare rock, drift-ing sand, or ice) already is either partiallyor heavily disturbed. Moreover, withinhuman-dominated landscapes, relativelydiverse patchworks of small-scale culti-vation, fallow fields, seasonal grazingareas, and managed native vegetation are being replaced by large, uniformfields or by extensive denuded anddegraded areas.43

The mixtures of species in differentregions are becoming more similar aswell. Lists of endangered plants are dominated by endemic species—thosenative to a relatively restricted area suchas a country or state, an isolated mountain range, or a specific soil type.When endemic plants vanish, the remaining species pool becomes moreuniform. Finally, the spectrum of distinctpopulations and varieties within plantspecies is shrinking, a problem mostadvanced in our endowment of domesti-cated plants.44

Countries that emerged in a worldfilled with biodiversity now must gain andmaintain prosperity amid increasing bio-uniformity. We are conducting anunprecedented experiment with the secu-rity and stability of our food supply, ourhealth care systems, and the ecologicalinfrastructure upon which both rest. Toobtain the results we desire, we must con-serve and protect the plant biodiversitythat remains with us, and manage our useof natural systems in ways that restore bio-diversity to landscapes worldwide.

STORED FOR SAFEKEEPING

Broad recognition of the need to safe-guard plant resources is largely a twenti-eth century phenomenon. The first warn-ings about the global erosion of plantdiversity were voiced in the 1920s by sci-entists such as Harry Harlan of theUnited States and Nikolai Vavilov, whorealized the threat posed by farmers’abandonment of landraces in favor ofnewer varieties that were spreading wide-ly in an increasingly interconnectedworld.45

The dominant approach to conservingplant varieties and species has involvedremoving them from their native habitator agricultural setting and protecting themat specialized institutions such as botanicalgardens, nurseries, and gene banks. Mostoff-site collections of wild species and orna-mental plants are in the custody of theworld’s 1,600 botanical gardens. Com-bined, they tend representatives of tens ofthousands of plant species—nearly 25 per-cent of the world’s flowering plants andferns, by one estimate.46

Most botanical gardens active todaywere established by European colonialpowers to introduce economically impor-tant and ornamental plants throughoutthe far-flung reaches of empires, and topromote the study of potentially usefulplants. Nowadays many botanical gardenshave reoriented their mission towardspecies preservation, particularly in theirresearch and education programs. Sincethe late 1980s, botanical gardens havecoordinated efforts through an interna-tional conservation network, which helpsensure that the rarest plants receive pri-ority for propagation and, ultimately,reintroduction.47

Gene banks have focused almost exclu-sively on storing seeds of crop varietiesand their immediate wild relatives. (Theprincipal exception is the Royal BotanicGarden’s Millennium Seed Bank in


England, which holds more than 4,000wild species and is expanding toward acollection of one quarter of the world’sflora.) Gene banks arose from plantbreeders’ need to have readily accessiblestocks of breeding material. Their conser-vation role came to the forefront in the1970s, following large losses linked togenetic uniformity in the southern U.S.corn crop in 1970 and the Soviet winterwheat crop of 1971–72.48

In 1974, governments and the UnitedNations established the InternationalBoard for Plant Genetic Resources (nowknown as the International Plant GeneticResources Institute, or IPGRI), which cob-bled together a global network of genebanks. The network includes universitybreeding programs, government seedstorage units, and the Consultative Groupon International Agricultural Research(CGIAR), a worldwide network of 16 agri-cultural research centers originally estab-lished to bring the Green Revolution todeveloping countries, and funded primar-ily by the World Bank and internationalaid agencies.49

The number of unique seed samples or“accessions” in gene banks now exceeds 6million. The largest chunk of these, morethan 500,000 accessions, are in the genebanks of CGIAR centers such as theInternational Rice Research Institute inthe Philippines and the InternationalWheat and Maize Improvement Center(CIMMYT) in Mexico. At least 90 percentof all gene bank accessions are of foodand commodity plants, especially theworld’s most intensively bred and eco-nomically valuable crops. (See Table6–3.) By the late 1980s, IPGRI regarded anumber of these crops, such as wheat andcorn, as essentially completely collected;that is, nearly all of the known landracesand varieties of the crop are already rep-resented in gene banks. Others have ques-tioned this assessment, however, arguingthat the lack of quantitative studies ofcrop gene pools makes it difficult to ascer-

tain whether even the best-studied cropshave been adequately sampled.50

There are additional reasons for inter-preting gene bank totals conservatively.The total annual cost of maintaining allaccessions currently in gene banks isabout $300 million, and many facilities,hard-pressed for operating funds, cannotmaintain seeds under optimal physicalconditions. Seeds that are improperlydried or kept at room temperature ratherthan in cold storage may begin to lose via-bility within a few years. At this point, theymust be “grown out”—germinated, plant-ed, raised to maturity, and then reharvest-ed, which is a time-consuming and labor-intensive activity when repeated for


Table 6–3. Gene Bank Collections forSelected Crops

Estimated ShareAccessions of Landraces

Crop in Gene Banks Collected(number) (percent)

Wheat 850,000 90Rice 420,000 90Corn 262,000 95Sorghum 168,500 80Soybeans 176,000 70Common

Beans 268,500 50Potatoes 31,000 80–90Cassava 28,000 35Tomatoes 77,500 90Squashes,

Cucumbers,Gourds 30,000 50

Onions, Garlic 25,000 70Sugarcane 27,500 70Cotton 48,500 75

SOURCE: Donald L. Plucknett et al., Gene Banks andthe World’s Food (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1987); Brian D. Wright, Crop Genetic ResourcePolicy: Toward A Research Agenda, EPTD DiscussionPaper 19 (Washington, DC: International FoodPolicy Research Institute, 1996); U.N. Food andAgriculture Organization, The State of the World’sPlant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Rome:1996).

thousands of accessions per year. Theseproblems suggest that an unknown frac-tion of accessions is probably of question-able viability.51

Only 13 percent of gene-banked seedsare in well-run facilities with long-termstorage capability—and even the crownjewels of the system, such as the U.S.National Seed Storage Laboratory, have attimes had problems maintaining seed via-bility rates. For extensively gene-bankedcrops (primarily major grains andlegumes) where large collections areduplicated in different facilities, the oddsof losing the diversity already on depositare reduced. But for sparsely collectedcrops whose accessions are stored at justone or two sites, the possibility of geneticerosion remains disquietingly high.52

Despite such drawbacks, off-site facili-ties remain indispensable for conserva-tion. In some cases, botanical gardens andgene banks have rescued species whosewild populations are now gone. They canalso help return diversity to its properhome through reintroduction programs.Although the uplands of East Africa arenot the center of domestication for com-mon beans, the farmers of the regionadopted them as their own several cen-turies ago, and have developed theworld’s richest mix of local bean varieties.When Rwanda was overwhelmed by civilconflict in 1994, the height of the genoci-dal violence occurred during theFebruary-to-June growing season, greatlyreducing harvests and raising theprospect of widespread famine. Amid therelief contributions that flowed into thecountry once the situation had stabilizedwere stocks of at least 170 bean varietiesthat had been previously collected inRwanda and stored in gene banks world-wide. These supplies helped ensure thatRwandan farmers had stocks of high-qual-ity, locally adapted beans for planting inthe subsequent growing season.53

Still, even the most enthusiastic boost-ers of botanical gardens and gene banks

recognize that such facilities, even whenimpeccably maintained, provide only onepiece in the conservation puzzle. Off-sitestorage takes species out of their naturalecological settings. Wild tomato seeds canbe sealed in a glass jar and frozen for safe-keeping, but left out of the cold are theplant’s pollinators, its dispersers, and allthe other organisms and relationshipsthat have shaped the plant’s unique evo-lution. Gene banks and botanical gardensonly save a narrow—albeit valuable—sliceof plant diversity. When stored seeds aregrown out over several generations off-site, in time they can even lose their nativeadaptations and evolve to fit instead theconditions of their captivity.54

KEEPING DIVERSITY IN PLACE

In the end, plant diversity can be securelymaintained only by protecting the nativehabitats and ecosystems where plants haveevolved. Countries have safeguarded wild-lands primarily through establishingnational parks, forest reserves, and otherformally protected areas. During this cen-tury, governments have steadily increasedprotected area networks, and they nowencompass nearly 12 million square kilo-meters, or about 8 percent of the Earth’sland surface. Many protected areas guardirreplaceable botanical resources, such asMalaysia’s Mount Kinabalu National Park,which safeguards the unique vegetationof southeast Asia’s highest peak. A fewreserves have been established specificallyto protect useful plants, such as the Sierrade Manantlan biosphere reserve inMexico, which encompasses the onlyknown populations of perennial wildcorn.55

Yet current protected area networksalso have major limitations. Many highlydiverse plant communities, such as tropi-cal deciduous forests, are greatly under-


protected. In addition, many protectedareas officially decreed on paper are min-imally implemented by chronically under-funded and understaffed naturalresource agencies. But perhaps the mostfundamental limitation of national parks,wilderness areas, and similarly strict desig-nations arises when they conflict with thecultural and economic importance thatplants hold for local communities.56

A great deal of the natural wealth thatconservationists have sought to protect isactually on lands and under waters longmanaged by local people. Indigenoussocieties worldwide have traditionally pro-tected prominent landscape features likemountains or forests, designating them assacred sites and ceremonial centers. Inparts of West Africa, sacred groves holdsome of the last remaining populations ofimportant medicinal plants. On Samoaand other Pacific islands, communitiesmanage forests to produce wild foods andmedicines, raw materials for canoes andhousehold goods, and other benefits.57

Not surprisingly, actions such as evict-ing long-term residents from newly desig-nated forest reserves, or denying themaccess to previously harvested plantstands, have generated a great deal of illwill toward protected areas worldwide.Fortunately, workable alternatives areemerging in a number of cases wherelong-term residents have been madeequal partners in managing protectedlands. In the Indian state of West Bengal,320,000 hectares of semi-deciduous salforest is managed jointly by villagers andthe state forestry department, with vil-lagers taking primary responsibility forpatrolling nearby forest stands. Sincejoint management began in 1972, the sta-tus of the sal forests has improved, andregenerating stands now provide villagerswith medicines, firewood, and wild-gath-ered foodstuffs. Medicinals also featureprominently in a 4,000-hectare rainforestreserve in Belize, which is government-owned but managed by the Belize Associa-

tion of Traditional Healers.58

Such collaboration between locals andprofessional resource managers is alsocrucial to reversing the overexploitationof valuable wild plants. Very few commer-cially marketed wild species are harvestedsustainably, in ways or at levels that do notdegrade the plant resource. Despite thelack of progress, however, the foundationsof sustainability are becoming increasing-ly clear. Secure and enforceable tenure isessential—either in the form of rights toharvest a plant or tenure over the land itgrows on. Harvesters also need enougheconomic security to be able to afford thetradeoffs involved in not harvesting every-thing at once. Access to fair and openmarkets is important, as is having tech-nology appropriate for the harvestingtask. Information about the ecology andproductivity of a plant can make a big dif-ference. Consumers willing to pay a pre-mium for well-harvested products alsohelp—like those generated through certi-fication programs for “environmentallyfriendly” products.59

Few wild harvests meet all these crite-ria, but a growing number of initiativesare coming close. In Mexico, ancientcone-bearing plants called cycads havebeen heavily exploited for their ornamen-tal value, both for sale domestically andfor horticultural export to the UnitedStates, Japan, and Europe. Most cycadsare wild-harvested by uprooting or cut-ting, but a botanical garden in the state ofVeracruz is working with local villagers toreduce pressures on several overexploitedspecies. In one community, MonteOscuro, residents set aside a communalplot of dry forest to protect a relict popu-lation of cycads in exchange for help withbuilding a community plant nursery.Seeds are collected from the wild plants,then germinated and tended in the nurs-ery by villagers who have received train-ing in basic cycad propagation. Some ofthe young cycads are returned to the for-est to offset any potential downturn in the


wild population from the seed harvest.The rest are sold and the profits deposit-ed in a community fund.60

Presently the largest hurdle is findinggood markets for the young plants thecommunities are producing; cycads areslow-growing, and horticultural buyersprefer larger plants. Better monitoringand enforcement of the internationalornamental plant trade would help, forMexican cycad species are listed with theConvention on International Trade inEndangered Species of Wild Fauna andFlora (CITES) of 1973, which provides apowerful legal tool for controlling inter-national trade in threatened plants andanimals. CITES is generally regarded asone of the more effective internationalenvironmental treaties. It prohibits tradein the most highly endangered species(listed in the Treaty’s Appendix I), andkeeps watch on vulnerable species (listedin Appendix II) by requiring that coun-tries issue a limited number of permits forthe species’ export and import betweensignatory countries. Although CITES pro-vides powerful tools for enforcing sustain-able harvests, it is still up to the countriesinvolved to use them.61

Combining local and internationalstrengths also is crucial for sustaining thegenetic diversity of our food supply. Whatis needed most is agricultural develop-ment that strengthens rather than simpli-fies plant diversity to meet the needs andgoals of farmers—especially subsistencefarmers in developing countries who stillmaintain diverse agricultural landscapes.

Meeting this challenge requires under-standing the particular cultural, econom-

ic, and technological reasons why farmersmaintain elements of traditional farming,such as unique crop variety mixtures. Forinstance, native Hopi communities in thesouthwest United States maintain indige-nous corn and lima bean varietiesbecause the germinating seeds are indis-pensable for religious ceremonies. Mendefarmers in Sierra Leone continue to grownative red-hulled African rice for thesame reason. Andean peasant farmers stillgrow pink and purple potatoes, big-seedcorn, quinoa, and other traditional cropsbecause that is what they themselves pre-fer to eat; the commercial varieties theygrow are strictly to sell for cash income.62

One option to help farmers maintaincrop diversity could involve supportingfarmers’ informal networks of seedexchange and procurement, so as toimprove their access to diverse seedsources. In some rural communities inZimbabwe, villagers contribute seedsannually to a community seed stock. Atthe start of the planting season, the seedsare redistributed to all community mem-bers, a step that gives villagers access tothe full range of varietal diversity presentin the immediate vicinity and ensures thatno one goes without seeds for planting.Grassroots organizations in Ethiopia,Peru, Tonga, and many other countrieshave sponsored community seed banks,regional agricultural fairs, seed collectiontours, demonstration gardens, and similarprojects to promote informal seedexchange between farmers, increase theiraccess to crop diversity, and help themreplenish seed stocks after poor harvests.63

Another approach to maintaining vari-etal diversity involves reorienting formalplant breeding toward the local needs offarmers. Typically plant breeders createuniform, widely adaptable “pure-bred”varietal lines, and only toward the end ofthe process are the lines evaluated withfarmers. Participatory plant breedingmethods involve farmers at all stages. Inthe most advanced programs, breeders


In some rural communities inZimbabwe, villagers contribute seedsannually to a community seed stock.

and farming communities work togetherover several crop generations to evaluate,select, combine, and improve a widerange of varieties, both those availablelocally and those from other regions. Inthis way, participatory plant breeding canimprove the suite of locally preferred varieties without resorting to varietal uni-formity; this approach maintains—orpotentially even enhances—the geneticdiversity present in farmers’ fields.64

Participatory plant breeding has beenpioneered primarily by grassroots devel-opment organizations and innovativenational plant breeding programs indeveloping countries; it has not beentaken up by commercial seed producers,perhaps because its benefits tend to bediffuse and not easily appropriated forcommercial gain. The CGIAR centers areexploring participatory approaches, butalso remain heavily involved in standardbreeding programs. For instance, thecorn and wheat center CIMMYT recentlycollaborated with university breeders andseed companies to develop better-yieldingcorn varieties targeted for highlandMexico—areas where corn landraces con-tinue to be grown by small-scale farmersunder diverse environmental conditions.In doing so, CIMMYT chose to focus onhybrid corn varieties. If well tailored tothe environmental and economic con-straints facing highland Mexican farmers,the new hybrids could boost crop yields—but farmers will be unable to save theirseeds and adapt them further to localconditions. The seed companies involvedwill surely benefit, but past experiencesuggests that local plant biodiversity maypay the price.65

As this last example shows, the mostfundamental changes to be made in pro-tecting crop genetic diversity—and plantbiodiversity in general—involve changingpolicies. Governments are often biasedtoward promoting intensive agriculturedependent on high inputs and genetical-ly uniform crops. Farmers in most south-

ern African countries, for instance, areonly eligible for government agriculturalcredit programs if they agree to plantmodern improved varieties. Internationaldevelopment aid and structural adjust-ment policies commonly promote nontra-ditional export crops, which can triggerhabitat conversion (erasing wild plantdiversity) and replace indigenous cropmixtures. Until fundamental policychanges are taken to heart by govern-ments, international lenders, and relatedinstitutions, the path to sustaining plantbiodiversity—wild or domesticated—willremain difficult.66

SHARING THE BENEFITS

Governments can begin to chart a newcourse by resolving the most prominentpolicy issue affecting plant diversity today:how to distribute biodiversity’s economicbenefits fairly and equitably. Establishinga system of intellectual property rights toplant resources has proved contentiousbecause of a simple pattern—plant diver-sity (both wild and cultivated) is heldmostly by developing countries, but theeconomic benefits it generates are dispro-portionately captured by industrialnations. For most of this century, plantdiversity has been treated as the “com-mon heritage” of humankind, freely avail-able to anyone who can use it, with pro-prietary ownership only granted viapatent law to individuals who demon-strate trade secrets or uniquely improve acrop variety or other plant.67

Since the early 1980s, however, therehas been widening agreement that indige-nous people and traditional farmersdeserve compensation for their long-standing generation, management, andknowledge of biodiversity. Grassrootsadvocates argue that indigenous peopledeserve “traditional resource rights” tothe plants they cultivate and know how to


use, rights that would have the same inter-national legal standing as that afforded topatent rights. Recognition of such rightsrequires, at a minimum, negotiating equi-table benefit-sharing agreements at thecommunity level whenever plants orindigenous knowledge about them is col-lected by researchers. An additional way toacknowledge the world’s debt to ruralcommunities who safeguard plant bio-diversity would be to establish an interna-tional fund supporting continued localmanagement of plant resources. Such astep appears the most practical means ofcompensation for the large amount ofplant biodiversity that is already in thepublic domain (such as the millions ofseed accessions in gene banks or plantswidely used as herbal medicines), sinceestablishing exactly who deserves compen-sation for commercial innovations fromthese plant resources is a Herculean task.68

To date, formal agreements for sharingthe benefits of plant diversity have beennegotiated most extensively in the searchfor new pharmaceuticals from plants inbiodiversity-rich developing countries.The first such “bioprospecting” agree-ment was announced in 1991 betweenMerck Pharmaceuticals and Costa Rica’snongovernmental National Institute ofBiodiversity (InBio), in which Merck paidInBio $1.1 million for access to plant andinsect samples, and promised to share anundisclosed percentage of royalties fromany commercial products that resulted.69

There are now at least a dozen bio-prospecting agreements in place world-wide, involving national governments,indigenous communities, conservationgroups, start-up companies, and estab-lished corporate giants. Most legitimateagreements have followed the Merck-InBio model, with a modest up-front pay-ment and a promise to return betweenone quarter of 1 percent and 3 percent(depending on the project) of any futureroyalties to the biodiversity holders.Bioprospecting proponents argue that

with the huge cost ($200–350 million) ofbringing a new drug to market, compa-nies cannot afford to share a higher per-centage of royalties. Critics, however, sus-pect many bilateral bioprospectingagreements are not negotiated on aneven footing; when a biotechnology firmapproached the U.S. government aboutprospecting for unique microbes inhabit-ing the geysers and hot springs ofYellowstone National Park, for instance,the Park Service negotiated a royaltyshare of 10 percent. Moreover, not all bio-prospecting agreements automaticallyuphold traditional resource rights; manyhave been negotiated on a national ratherthan community level, involving govern-ments who many indigenous people thinkdo not adequately represent—indeed,sometimes actively undermine—theirinterests.70

In contrast with bioprospecting, resolv-ing who owns the world’s crop geneticresources is being negotiated multilateral-ly, in factious diplomatic arenas. In 1989FAO adopted a Farmers’ Rights proposalthat would compensate farmers for theircontribution to biodiversity via an inter-national trust fund to support the conser-vation of plant genetic resources. The1992 Convention on Biological Diversityalso called for incorporating Farmers’Rights, subsequent to further internation-al negotiations. There has been no offi-cial endorsement of this concept, howev-er, from the industrial nations who wouldprovide the compensation, and the fundhas remained unimplemented. Duringthe most recent round of internationalnegotiations, in June 1998, the EuropeanUnion appeared ready to supportFarmers’ Rights, but Australian, U.S., andCanadian diplomats continued tostonewall the issue.71

Meanwhile, the intellectual propertyagenda of industrial countries is beingadvanced by the World Trade Organi-zation (WTO). All countries acceding tothe General Agreement on Tariffs and


Trades are required to establish a systemfor protecting breeders’ rights throughplant variety patents. They can eitheradopt the system of administering patentsand breeders’ rights followed by industri-al nations under the International Unionfor the Protection of New Varieties ofPlants (UPOV), or instead design theirown unique system. The UPOVConvention was established in 1978 andsubstantially revised in 1991; initially itgave farmers the right to save commercialseed for their own use, but the 1991 ver-sion allowed signatory countries to revokethis right. Some countries, includingIndia, are looking at structuring theirown plant patent systems to also acknowl-edge farmers’ rights, but it is unclearwhether the WTO will approve sucharrangements.72

Despite the foot-dragging in interna-tional arenas, de facto boundaries areemerging for what will and will not be tol-erated in the expropriation of crop genet-ic resources. In May 1997, two Australianagricultural centers applied for propri-etary breeders’ rights on two varieties of chickpeas. Their application sparked aninternational uproar because theAustralian breeders had obtained bothvarieties from a CGIAR gene bank, whichhad provided the seeds with the under-standing they were to be used for researchand not for direct financial gain.Moreover, the Australians did little breed-ing to improve the two chickpeas, one ofwhich was a landrace widely grown byIndian farmers, and they even appeared tobe laying the groundwork to market thechickpeas in India and Pakistan.Ultimately, the Australian governmentbowed to international pressure andrejected the patent application. TheCGIAR subsequently called for a moratori-um on all claims for proprietary breedingrights involving germplasm held in trust byCGIAR or FAO-sponsored gene banks.73

While blatant gene grabs like that ofthe Australians may now be beyond the

international pale, the current situationremains far from ideal. The lack of a clear,multilateral system of intellectual proper-ty rights for plant genetic resources dis-tracts governments from the task of con-serving these resources for futuregenerations. The right of subsistencefarmers to save and adapt the seeds theyplant—arguably the most importantmechanism for sustaining crop geneticdiversity in fields—still has not been rec-ognized by many governments. Withoutclear ground rules established, institu-tions and industries that depend directlyon biodiversity for their well-being havelittle incentive to invest in strategies tohelp sustain plant diversity in the fieldsand wildlands where it originates. Allcountries must redouble their efforts tosurmount the political logjam over plantgenetic resources, for continued delayputs biodiversity at risk, and ultimatelyserves no one’s interest.74

For all of human history, we havedepended on plants and the rest of biodi-versity for our soul and subsistence. Nowthe roles are reversed, and biodiversity’sfate depends squarely on how we shapeour own future. From reducing over-exploitation of wild plants to establishingtraditional resource rights for biodiversitystewards, many options are available fordeveloping cultural links that supportplant diversity rather than diminish it.Such steps are not just about meetinginternational treaty obligations or estab-lishing new protected areas, but ratherare part of a larger process of shaping


The right of subsistence farmers tosave and adapt the seeds they plantstill has not been recognized by manygovernments.

ecologically literate civil societies that arein balance with the natural world. Tomaintain biodiversity’s benefits, what matters most is how well we meet the chal-lenges of living sustainably with our deedsas well as our words.


NotesChapter 6. Appreciating the Benefitsof Plant Biodiversity

1. Wild potato descriptions based on J.G.Hawkes, The Potato: Evolution, Biodiversity andGenetic Resources (Washington, DC: Smith-sonian Institution Press, 1990); Irish potatofamine from Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney,Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of GeneticDiversity (Tucson, AZ: University of ArizonaPress, 1990); resurgent potato blight informa-tion from Kurt Kleiner, “Save Our Spuds,” NewScientist, 30 May 1998, from Pat Roy Mooney,“The Parts of Life: Agricultural Biodiversity,Indigenous Knowledge and the Third System,”Development Dialogue, nos. 1–2, 1996, from“Potatoes Blighted,” New Scientist, 21 March1998, and from International Potato Center,“An Opportunity for Disease Control,”<http://www.cgiar.org/cip/blight/lbcntrl.htm>, viewed 23 September 1998.

2. Plant species total from Vernon H.Heywood and Stephen D. Davis, “Introduc-tion,” in S.D. Davis et al., eds., Centers of PlantDiversity: Volume 3, The Americas (Oxford, U.K.:World Wide Fund for Nature, 1997).

3. Cultivated plant total from Robert andChristine Prescott-Allen, “How Many PlantFeed the World?” Conservation Biology,December 1990; other agricultural informa-tion from Fowler and Mooney, op. cit. note 1;medicinal information from Michael J. Balickand Paul Alan Cox, Plants, People and Culture:The Science of Ethnobotany (New York: ScientificAmerican Library, 1996).

4. Global human population from U.N.

Population Division, World PopulationProjections to 2150 (New York: United Nations,1998); use of Earth’s biological systems fromPeter M. Vitousek et al., “Human Dominationof Earth’s Ecosystems,” Science, 25 July 1997.

5. Calculations of background extinctionrates from David M. Raup, “A Kill Curve forPhanerozoic Marine Species,” Paleobiology, vol.17, no. 1 (1991). Raup’s exact estimate is onespecies extinct every four years, based on apool of 1 million species; the range here of1–10 species per year is based on current esti-mates of total species worldwide. Estimates forcurrent rates of extinction are reviewed byNigel Stork, “Measuring Global Biodiversityand Its Decline,” in Marjorie L. Reaka-Kudla,Don E. Wilson, and Edward O. Wilson, eds.,Biodiversity II: Understanding and Protecting OurBiological Resources (Washington, DC: JosephHenry Press, 1997), and by Stuart L. Pimm etal., “The Future of Biodiversity,” Science, 21 July1995. Rates translated into whole numbersbased on an assumption of a total pool of 10million species.

6. Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992).

7. Endangerment information fromKerry S. Walter and Harriet J. Gillett, eds.,1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants (Gland,Switzerland: World Conservation Union–IUCN, 1997).

8. Andean Colombia community endan-germent from Andrew Henderson, Steven P.Churchill, and James L. Luteyn, “NeotropicalPlant Diversity,” Nature, 2 May 1991, from D.

Olson et al., eds., Identifying Gaps in BotanicalInformation for Biodiversity Conservation in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean (Washington, DC:World Wildlife Fund, 1997), and from J.Orlando Rangel Ch., Petter D. Lowy C., andMauricio Aguilar P., Colombia: DiversidadBiotica II (Santafé de Bogotá, Colombia:Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, UniversidadNacional de Colombia, 1997); westernAustralia from Wilson, op. cit. note 6; NewCaledonia from J.M. Veillon, “Protection ofFloristic Diversity in New Caledonia,”Biodiversity Letters, May/July 1993; SoutheastFlorida habitats from Florida Natural AreasInventory, county summaries, <http://www.fnai.org/dade-sum.htm> and <http://www.fnai.org/natcom.htm>, viewed 3 September1998, and from Lance Gunderson, “Vegetationof the Everglades: Determinants ofCommunity Composition,” in Steven M. Davisand John C. Ogden, eds., Everglades: TheEcosystem and Its Restoration (Delray Beach, FL:St. Lucie Press, 1994).

9. H. Garrison Wilkes, “Conservation ofMaize Crop Relatives in Guatemala,” in C.S.Potter, J.I. Cohen, and D. Janczewski, eds.,Perspectives on Biodiversity: Case Studies of GeneticResource Conservation and Development(Washington, DC: AAAS Press, 1993).

10. Total edible plant species fromTimothy M. Swanson, David W. Pearce, andRaffaello Cervigni, The Appropriation of theBenefits of Plant Genetic Resources for Agriculture:An Economic Analysis of the AlternativeMechanisms for Biodiversity Conservation, FAOCommission on Plant Genetic Resources(Rome: U.N. Food and Agriculture Organi-zation (FAO), 1994); hunter-gatherer plantuse from Fowler and Mooney, op. cit. note 1;wild grass harvesting from U.S. NationalResearch Council (NRC), Lost Crops of Africa:Volume I, Grains (Washington, DC: NationalAcademy Press, 1996); Thailand informationfrom P. Somnasang, P. Rathakette, and S.Rathanapanya, “The Role of Natural Foods inNortheast Thailand,” RRA Research Reports(Khon Khaen, Thailand: Khon Khaen

University—Ford Foundation Rural SystemsResearch Project, 1988); Iquitos informationfrom Rodolfo Vasquez and Alwyn H. Gentry,“Use and Misuse of Forest-Harvested Fruits inthe Iquitos Area,” Conservation Biology, January1989, and from Alwyn Gentry, “NewNontimber Forest Products from WesternSouth America,” in Mark Plotkin and LisaFamolare, eds., Sustainable Harvest andMarketing of Rain Forest Products (Washington,DC: Island Press, 1992).

11. Origins of agriculture from Fowler andMooney, op. cit. note 1; centers of crop diver-sity from N.I. Vavilov, “The Origin, Variation,Immunity, and Breeding of Cultivated Plants,”Chronica Botanica, vol. 13, no. I/6 (1949–50);potato species total from Karl S. Zimmerer,“The Ecogeography of Andean Potatoes,”Bioscience, June 1998; Andean crops domesti-cated from Margery L. Oldfield, The Value ofConserving Genetic Resources (Washington, DC:U.S. Department of Interior, National ParkService, 1984), and from Mario E. Tapia andAlcides Rosa, “Seed Fairs in the Andes: AStrategy for Local Conservation of PlantResources,” in David Cooper, Renée Vellvé,and Henk Hobbelink, eds., Growing Diversity:Genetic Resources and Local Food Security(London: Intermediate Technology Publi-cations, 1991).

12. Landrace utility from MichaelLoevinsohn and Louise Sperling, “JoiningDynamic Conservation to DecentralizedGenetic Enhancement: Prospects and Issues,”in Michael Loevinsohn and Louise Sperling,eds., Using Diversity: Enhancing and MaintainingGenetic Resources On-Farm (New Delhi, India:International Development Research Centre,1996); India landrace estimate from Swanson,Pearce, and Cervigni, op. cit. note 10.

13. Developing-country seed saving fromMark Wright et al., The Retention and Care ofSeeds by Small-scale Farmers (Chatham, U.K.:Natural Resources Institute, 1994), and fromV. Venkatesan, Seed Systems in Sub-SaharanAfrica: Issues and Options, World Bank

(190) Notes (Chapter 6)

Discussion Paper 266 (Washington, DC: WorldBank, 1994); hybrid seeds from Jack R.Kloppenburg, Jr., First the Seed: The PoliticalEconomy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492–2000 (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1988), andfrom Fowler and Mooney, op. cit. note 1; ille-gality of seed saving from Tracy Clunies-Ross,“Creeping Enclosure: Seed Legislation, PlantBreeders’ Rights and Scottish Potatoes,” TheEcologist, May/June 1996, and from JohnGeadelmann, “Three Main Barriers: WeakProtection for Intellectual Property Rights,Unreasonable Phytosanitary Rules, andCompulsory Varietal Regulation,” in DavidGisselquist and Jitendra Srivastava, eds., EasingBarriers to Movement of Plant Varieties forAgricultural Development, World BankDiscussion Paper 367 (Washington, DC: WorldBank, 1997).

14. FAO, The State of the World’s Plant GeneticResources for Food and Agriculture (Rome: 1996);Fowler and Mooney, op. cit. note 1.

15. FAO, op. cit. note 14; population esti-mate for rural poor supported by subsistenceagriculture originally calculated in Edward C.Wolf, Beyond the Green Revolution: NewApproaches for Third World Agriculture,Worldwatch Paper 73 (Washington, DC:Worldwatch Institute, 1986) and reverified byWorldwatch using 1997 data from FAO, FAO-STAT Database, <http://faostat.fao.org>; wheatlandrace from Rural Advancement Founda-tion International (RAFI), The Benefits ofBiodiversity: 100+ Examples of the Contribution byIndigenous & Rural Communities in the South toDevelopment in the North, RAFI OccasionalPaper Series (Winnipeg, MN, Canada: March1994).

16. Oliver L. Phillips and Brien A. Meilleur,“Usefulness and Economic Potential of theRare Plants of the United States: A StatisticalSurvey,” Economic Botany, vol. 52, no. 1 (1998).

17. FAO, op. cit. note 14.

18. Senegal example from Tom Osborn,Participatory Agricultural Extension: Experiences

from West Africa, Gatekeepers Series No. SA48(London: International Institute forEnvironment and Development, 1995).

19. FAO, op. cit. note 14; Fowler andMooney, op. cit. note 1; RAFI, “The LifeIndustry 1997,” RAFI Communiqué,November/December 1997.

20. NRC, Managing Global Genetic Resources:Agricultural Crop Issues and Policies(Washington, DC: National Academy Press,1993).

21. FAO, op. cit. note 14; NRC, op. cit. note20; Netherlands study from Renée Vellvé,Saving the Seed: Genetic Diversity and EuropeanAgriculture (London: Earthscan Publications,1992).

22. Donald L. Plucknett et al., Gene Banksand the World’s Food (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1987); NRC, op. cit. note 20.

23. FAO, op. cit. note 14; Brian D. Wright,Crop Genetic Resource Policy: Toward A ResearchAgenda, EPTD Discussion Paper 19(Washington, DC: International Food PolicyResearch Institute, 1996); grassy stunt resis-tance from International Rice ResearchInstitute, “Beyond Rice: Wide Crosses Broadenthe Gene Pool,” <http://www.cgiar.org/irri/Biodiversity/widecrosses.htm>, viewed 9September 1998.

24. Balick and Cox, op. cit. note 3.

25. WHO figure cited in ibid.; Manjul Bajajand J.T. Williams, Healing Forests, HealingPeople: Report of a Workshop on Medicinal Plantsheld on 6–8 February, 1995, Calicut, India (NewDelhi: International Development ResearchCentre, 1995); over-the-counter drug valuefrom Kenton R. Miller and Laura Tangley,Trees of Life: Saving Tropical Forests and TheirBiological Wealth (Boston, MA: Beacon Press,1991).

26. Balick and Cox, op. cit. note 3; Chinafigures from Pei-Gen Xiao, “The ChineseApproach to Medicinal Plants,” in O. Akerele.

Notes (Chapter 6) (191)

V. Heywood, and H. Synge, eds., Conservationof Medicinal Plants (Cambridge, U.K.:Cambridge University Press, 1991); Ayurvedicfigures from Bajaj and Williams, op. cit.note25, and from S.K. Jain and Robert A.DeFilipps, Medicinal Plants of India, Vol. I(Algonac, MI: Reference Publications, 1991);importance of traditional medicine for ruralpoor from John Lambert, Jitendra Srivastava,and Noel Vietmeyer, Medicinal Plants: Rescuinga Global Heritage (Washington, DC: WorldBank, 1997), and from Gerard Bodeker andMargaret A. Hughes, “Wound Healing,Traditional Treatments and Research Policy,”in H.D.V. Prendergast et al., eds., Plants forFood and Medicine (Kew, U.K.: Royal BotanicGardens, 1998).

27. International medicinal trade detailsfrom M. Iqbal, Trade Restrictions AffectingInternational Trade in Non-Wood Forest Products(Rome: FAO, 1995); U.S. medicinal marketfrom Jennie Wood Shelton, Michael J. Balick,and Sarah A. Laird, Medicinal Plants: CanUtilization and Conservation Coexist? (New York:New York Botanical Garden, 1997).

28. Lambert, Srivastava, and Vietmeyer, op.cit. note 26; A.B. Cunningham, AfricanMedicinal Plants: Setting Priorities at the InterfaceBetween Conservation and Primary Health Care,People and Plants Working Paper 1 (Paris:UNESCO, 1993); Panama information fromauthor’s fieldnotes, Darién province, Panama,1998.

29. A.B. Cunningham and F. T. Mbenkum,Sustainability of Harvesting Prunus africanaBark in Cameroon: A Medicinal Plant inInternational Trade, People and Plants WorkingPaper 2 (Paris: UNESCO, 1993).

30. Number of plants assessed from Balickand Cox, op. cit. note 3; estimates of undis-covered drugs from Robert Mendelsohn andMichael J. Balick, “The Value of UndiscoveredPharmaceuticals in Tropical Forests,” EconomicBotany, April-June 1995.

31. Lack of healer apprentices from Balickand Cox, op. cit. note 3, and from MarkPlotkin, Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice (NewYork: Viking Press, 1994).

32. Percentage of material needs met byplants from the Crucible Group, People, Plants,and Patents: The Impact of Intellectual Property onTrade, Plant Biodiversity and Rural Society(Ottawa, Canada: International DevelopmentResearch Centre, 1994); babassu uses fromPeter H. May, “Babassu Palm Product Markets,”in Plotkin and Famolare, op. cit. note 10;babassu economic importance from AnthonyB. Anderson, Peter H. May, and Michael J.Balick, The Subsidy from Nature: Palm Forests,Peasantry, and Development on an Amazon Frontier(New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

33. Palm cultures from AndrewHenderson, Gloria Galeano, and RodrigoBernal, Field Guide to the Palms of the Americas(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1995).

34. Ecuador information from Anders S.Barfod and Lars Peter Kvist, “ComparativeEthnobotanical Studies of the AmerindianGroups in Coastal Ecuador,” Biologiske Skrifter,vol. 46, 1996; Borneo information fromHanne Christensen, “Palms and People in theBornean Rain Forest,” Society for EconomicBotany annual meetings, Aarhus, Denmark,July 1998; India information from Food andNutrition Division, “Non-Wood ForestProducts and Nutrition,” in Report of theInternational Expert Consultation on Non-WoodForest Products (Rome: FAO, 1995).

35. Timber tree total calculated from tradestatistics of the International Tropical TimberOrganization, <http://www.itto.or.jp/timber_situation/timber1997/appendix.html#app3>,viewed 7 September 1998; essential oil totalfrom J.J.W. Coppen, Flavours and Fragrances ofPlant Origin (Rome: FAO, 1995); gum andlatex total from J.J.W. Coppen, Gums, Resinsand Latexes of Plant Origin (Rome: FAO, 1995);dye total from C.L. Green, Natural Colourantsand Dyestuffs (Rome: FAO, 1995).


36. Terry Sunderland, “The Rattan Palmsof Central Africa and Their EconomicImportance,” Society for Economic BotanyAnnual Meetings, Aarhus, Denmark, July1998; regional status of rattan resources fromInternational Network for Bamboo andRattan, “Bamboo/Rattan Worldwide,” INBARNewsletter, vol. 4 (no date) and vol. 5 (1997).

37. Biological dynamics of fragmentedhabitats from William S. Alverson, WalterKuhlmann, and Donald M. Waller, Wild Forests:Conservation Biology and Public Policy(Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993); islandand area effects were first synthesized byRobert H. MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson,The Theory of Island Biogeography (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967).

38. Río Palenque details from C.H. Dodsonand A.H. Gentry, “Biological Extinction inWestern Ecuador,” Annals of the MissouriBotanical Garden, vol. 78, no. 2 (1991), andfrom Gentry, op. cit. note 10.

39. Richard B. Primack, Essentials ofConservation Biology (Sunderland, MA: SinauerAssociates, 1993).

40. Heywood and Davis, op. cit. note 2;Donald G. McNeil, Jr., “South Africa’s NewEnvironmentalism,” New York Times, 15 June1998.

41. Nitrogen overload effects from AnneSimon Moffatt, “Global Nitrogen OverloadProblem Grows Critical,” Science, 13 February1998; climate change synergies from ChrisBright, “Tracking the Ecology of ClimateChange,” in Lester R. Brown et al., State of theWorld 1997 (New York: W.W. Norton &Company, 1997).

42. Oliver L. Phillips and Alwyn H. Gentry,“Increasing Turnover Through Time inTropical Forests,” Science, 18 February 1994.

43. Conservation International study sum-marized in Lee Hannah et al., “A PreliminaryInventory of Human Disturbance of WorldEcosystems,” Ambio, July 1994, and from Lee

Hannah, John L. Carr, and Ali Lankerani,“Human Disturbance and Natural Habitat: ABiome Level Analysis of a Global Data Set,”Biodiversity and Conservation, vol. 4, 1995.

44. Walter and Gillett, op. cit. note 7;Zimmerer, op. cit. note 11.

45. Plucknett et al., op. cit. note 22.

46. Botanic Gardens Conservation Inter-national, “Introduction: Botanic Gardens &Conservation,” <http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/BGCI/babrief.htm>, viewed 17 June 1998.

47. Plucknett et al., op. cit. note 22;Botanical Gardens Conservation Interna-tional, op. cit. note 46.

48. Fowler and Mooney, op. cit. note 1;Plucknett et al., op. cit. note 22; MillenniumSeed Bank information from R.D. Smith, S.H.Linington, and G.E. Wechsberg, “TheMillennium Seed Bank, The Convention onBiological Diversity and the Dry Tropics,” inH.D.V. Prendergast et al., eds., Plants for Foodand Medicine (Kew, U.K.: Royal BotanicalGardens, 1998).

49. Plucknett et al., op. cit. note 22;Mooney, op. cit. note 1.

50. FAO, op. cit. note 14; Plucknett et al.,op. cit. note 22; Wright, op. cit. note 23; land-race coverage in gene banks is questioned by Fowler and Mooney, op. cit. note 1, and byPablo Eyzaguirre and Masa Iwanaga, “Farmer’sContribution to Maintaining Genetic Diversityin Crops, and Its Role Within the Total GeneticResources System,” in P. Eyzaguirre and M.Iwanaga, eds., Participatory Plant Breeding:Proceedings of a Workshop on Participatory PlantBreeding, 26–29 July 1995, Wageningen, TheNetherlands (Rome: International PlantGenetic Resources Institute, 1996).

51. Total annual cost for accession mainte-nance calculated from figure of $50 per acces-sion from Stephen B. Brush, “Valuing CropGenetic Resources,” Journal of Environment &Development, December 1996; Plucknett et al.,


op. cit. note 22; FAO, op. cit. note 14; Fowlerand Mooney, op. cit. note 1.

52. FAO, op. cit. note 14; Plucknett et al.,op. cit. note 22; Fowler and Mooney, op. cit.note 1.

53. Louise Sperling, “Results, Methods,and Institutional Issues in ParticipatorySelection: The Case of Beans in Rwanda,” inEyzaguirre and Iwanaga, op. cit. note 50.

54. Gary P. Nabhan, Enduring Seeds: NativeAmerican Agriculture and Wild PlantConservation (San Francisco, CA: North PointPress, 1989).

55. Global protected area total from IUCN,<http://www.iucn.org/info_and_news/index.html>, viewed 20 September 1998; Mt.Kinabalu from Heywood and Davis, op. cit.note 2; Manantlan from Hugh H. Iltis,“Serendipity in the Evolution of Biodiversity:What Good Are Weedy Tomatoes?” in EdwardO. Wilson, ed., Biodiversity (Washington, DC:National Academy Press, 1988).

56. Carel van Schaik, John Terborgh, andBarbara L. Dugelby, “The Silent Crisis: TheState of Rain Forest Nature Preserves,” inRandall Kramer, Carel van Schaik, and JulieJohnson, eds., Last Stand: Protected Areas and theDefense of Tropical Biodiversity (New York:Oxford University Press, 1997).

57. P. Ramakrishnan, “Conserving theSacred: From Species to Landscapes,” Nature& Resources, vol. 32, no. 1 (1996); West Africadetails from Aiah R. Lebbie and Raymond P.Guries, “Ethnobotanical Value and Conser-vation of Sacred Groves of the Kpaa Mende inSierra Leone,” Economic Botany, vol. 49, no. 3(1995); Pacific Islander information fromBalick and Cox, op. cit. note 3.

58. India information from MarkPoffenberger, Betsy McGean, and ArvindKhare, “Communities Sustaining India’sForests in the Twenty-first Century,” in MarkPoffenberger and Betsy McGean, eds., VillageVoices, Forest Choices: Joint Forest Management in

India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,1996), and from Payal Sampat, “India’sChoice,” World Watch, July/August 1998; Belizeinformation from Balick and Cox, op. cit. note3, and from Rosita Arvigo, Sastun: MyApprenticeship with a Maya Healer (New York:Harper Collins, 1994).

59. Oliver Phillips, “Using and Conservingthe Rainforest,” Conservation Biology, March1993; Jason W. Clay, Generating Income andConserving Resources: 20 Lessons from the Field(Washington, DC: World Wildlife Fund, 1996);Plotkin and Famolare, op. cit. note 10; CharlesM. Peters, Sustainable Harvest of Non-timberPlant Resources in Tropical Moist Forest: AnEcological Primer (Washington, DC: USAIDBiodiversity Support Program, 1994).

60. A.P. Vovides and C.G. Iglesias, “AnIntegrated Conservation Strategy for theCycad Dioon edule Lindl,” Biodiversity andConservation, vol. 3, 1994; Andrew P. Vovides,“Propagation of Mexican Cycads by PeasantNurseries,” Species, December 1997.

61. Vovides and Iglesias, op. cit. note 60;Vovides, op. cit. note 60; “CITES and the RoyalBotanic Gardens Kew,” <http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/ksheets/cites.html>, viewed 17 June1998.

62. Karl S. Zimmerer, Changing Fortunes:Biodiversity and Peasant Livelihood in thePeruvian Andes (Berkeley, CA: University ofCalifornia Press, 1996); Hopi example fromNabhan, op. cit. note 54; Mende examplefrom NRC, op. cit. note 10.

63. Zimbabwe example from Seema vanOosterhout, “What Does In Situ ConservationMean in the Life of a Small-Scale Farmer?Examples from Zimbabwe’s CommunalAreas,” in Loevinsohn and Sperling, UsingDiversity, op. cit. note 12; other informationfrom Loevinsohn and Sperling, Using Diversity,op. cit. note 12, and from Eyzaguirre andIwanaga, op. cit. note 50.

64. J.R. Whitcombe and A. Joshi, “The


Impact of Farmer Participatory Research onBiodiversity of Crops,” in Loevinsohn andSperling, Using Diversity, op. cit. note 12; JohnWhitcombe and Arun Joshi, “Farmer Parti-cipatory Approaches for Varietal Breeding andSelection and Linkages to the Formal SeedSector,” in Eyzaguirre and Iwanaga, op. cit.note 47; K.W. Riley, “Decentralized Breedingand Selection: Tool to Link Diversity andDevelopment,” in Loevinsohn and Sperling,Using Diversity, op. cit. note 12.

65. Eyzaguirre and Iwanaga, op. cit. note50; Swanson, Pearce, and Cervigni, op. cit.note 10; G.M. Listman et al., “Mexican andCIMMYT Researchers ‘Transform Diversity’ ofHighland Maize to Benefit Farmers with High-Yielding Seed,” Diversity, vol. 12, no. 2 (1996).

66. FAO, op. cit. note 14; RAFI, The LeipzigProcess: Food Security, Diversity, and Dignity in the Nineties, RAFI Occasional Paper Series(Winnipeg, MN, Canada: June 1996); Swanson,Pearce, and Cervigni, op. cit. note 10.

67. Mooney, op. cit. note 1; Brush, op. cit.note 51.

68. Mooney, op. cit. note 1; Darrell A.Posey, Traditional Resource Rights: InternationalInstruments for Protection and Compensation forIndigenous Peoples and Local Communities(Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 1996); John Tuxilland Gary Paul Nabhan, Plants and ProtectedAreas: A Guide to In Situ Management (London:Stanley Thornes Publishers, 1998); Brush, op.cit. note 51.

69. InBio details from Michel P. Pimbertand Jules Pretty, Parks, People and Professionals:Putting “Participation” Into Protected AreaManagement, UNRISD Discussion Paper #57(Geneva: United Nations Research Institutefor Social Development, 1995), and fromAnthony Artuso, “Capturing the ChemicalValue of Biodiversity: Economic Perspectivesand Policy Prescriptions,” in Francesca Grifoand Joshua Rosenthal, Biodiversity and HumanHealth (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997).

70. Drug development cost estimates fromShelton, Balick, and Laird, op. cit. note 27;bioprospecting details from Pimbert andPretty, op. cit. note 69, and from RAFI,“Biopiracy Update: The Inequitable Sharingof Benefits,” RAFI Communiqué, September/October 1997; traditional resource rights fromPosey, op. cit. note 68.

71. Crucible Group, op. cit. note 32;Swanson, Pearce, and Cervigni, op. cit. note10; Bees Butler and Robin Pistorius, “HowFarmers’ Rights Can Be Used to Adapt PlantBreeders’ Rights,” Biotechnology and Develop-ment Monitor, September 1996; Henry L.Shands, “Access: Bartering and BrokeringGenetic Resources,” in June F. MacDonald,ed., Genes for the Future: Discovery, Ownership,Access, NABC Report #7 (Ithaca, NY: NationalAgricultural Biotechnology Council, 1995);RAFI, Repeat the Term! Report on FAO’s GeneCommission in Rome June 8–12, 1998, RAFIOccasional Paper Series (Winnipeg, MN,Canada: July 1998).

72. Butler and Pistorius, op. cit. note 71;Crucible Group, op. cit. note 32; José LuisSolleiro, “Intellectual Property Rights: Key toAccess or Entry Barrier for DevelopingCountries,” in MacDonald, op. cit. note 71.

73. RAFI, “The Australian PBR Scandal,”RAFI Communiqué, January/February 1998;“Foreign Invasion,” Down to Earth, 28 February1998.

74. RAFI, op. cit. note 71.


6 Appreciating the Beneﬁts of Plant Biodiversityresilience.earth.lsa.umich.edu/Inquiries/Module...little trouble. Indeed, ﬂowering plants, which now account for nearly 90 percent

Documents