Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty ... - Yale University

74
agroecology and the struggle for food sovereignty
Conservation Must Expand Scope
In his workshop presentation, Karl Zimmerer described the pan-American failure to
integrate protected areas with other land uses. He showed that, on a map, the
Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, a contiguous corridor from Panamá to the
Mexican state of Oaxaca, appears as the braided tributaries of a river crossing a flood
plain, looking like anything but a contiguous corridor. The areas left out of the corridor
are agricultural production zones. According to Ivette Perfecto, an ecologist at
the University of Michigan, Zimmerer’s map may represent a failure of conservation
policy but not necessarily a failure of conservation. In her presentation, Perfecto urges
conservation groups to refocus their attention on agricultural lands.
Ivette Perfecto.
Photographer: Steve Taylor.
“Protected areas are failing.”
“We are focusng on the wrong
parts of the taxonomy.
Conservation has focused a lot
of time and effort on protecting
the charismatic megafauna.”
“It’s not just the amount of biodiversity,
it’s the function that
the biodiversity has.”
“In areas around the world
where traditional agriculture
has been converted to more
monoculture-type systems,
species are disappearing.”
– Ivette Perfecto
Protected Areas: Too Little, Too Isolated
Protected areas have been the major outgrowth of the 30-year-old media campaign
on impending mass extinctions and declining biodiversity. They have protected relatively
little of what will be needed if major biodiversity declines are to be avoided,
Perfecto asserted, and many preserves are failing because they are relatively small,
temporary, and insular. In fact, 90 percent of the Earth’s land is actively or partially
managed, leaving only 10 percent maintained as protected areas.
In addition to making up a tiny proportion of total land worldwide, protected
areas themselves are often too small, and located in landscapes too fragmented, to
function optimally. “Protected areas sufficiently large to prevent extinction are economically
and politically unfeasible,” said Perfecto. For instance, very high extinction
rates are observed in protected areas located near significantly disturbed habitat. In
Singapore, the national park has lost 50 percent of its plant diversity during its brief
history due to impacts from the urban area that surrounds it. Therefore, ecologists
are calling for landscape-level approaches to conservation. Such approaches, Perfecto
argued, make it “critical to . . . include managed ecosystems in conservation plans.”
Practical Biodiversity: Function Over Form
With such glaring limitations, why are protected areas still the conservation unit of
choice? Perfecto traced both their rise and predominance to an important engine
driving biodiversity conservation today: public interest in big, cute animals. “We are
focusing on the wrong parts of the taxonomy,” Perfecto alleged. “Conservation has
focused a lot of time and effort on protecting the charismatic megafauna.”
If sheer quantity of biodiversity were made the driving force, the focus would shift
underfoot. Arthropods (mainly insects and spiders) represent 40 percent of the
world’s biodiversity, much of it in the soil. However, Perfecto emphasized the need to
consider purposes of conservation beyond sheer numbers of species: “It’s not just the
amount of biodiversity, it’s the function that the biodiversity has.”
Agriculture Systems Conserve Biodiversity
Functional biodiversity can often be found in alternative, small-scale, or traditional
farming systems. Perfecto explained that these systems buck a general trend in
agriculture toward “biological deserts,” the extensive monoculture type of agriculture
yale school of forestry & environmental studies