Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Differing diversities12. For this reason, Austria has committed itself to the objective of sustainable agriculturewhich “couples an ecological, site-specific adaptation of production methods to ahighly structured and diverse cultural landscape” (Austria, 1997: 14). Agricultural policyin Switzerland aims “to sustain forms of traditional exploitation, particularly thosewhich have contributed to the formation of landscapes and to increase the diversity ofecosystems” (Switzerland, 1998: 33), whereas the United Kingdom recognises “theimportance of those traditional skills and practices upon which many valued habitatsdepend” (United Kingdom, 1998: 28). Switzerland has long had legislation – theFederal Law on the Protection of Nature and Landscape (1966) – designed “to preserveindigenous animal and plant species, biotopes and landscapes” (Switzerland, 1998: 15),a land planning law – the Federal Law on Land-Use Planning (1979) – that allows forthe protection of areas “of great ecological or cultural importance” (Switzerland, 1998:16) and, most recently, a fund of 50 million Swiss francs was established “to contributeto the conservation of traditional rural landscapes, and to safeguard ancient methods ofexploitation, cultural heritage, and natural landscapes” (Switzerland, 1998: 17).13. Commitments to traditional cultivation methods may be matched by “compensationpayments for disadvantaged areas” (Austria, 1997: 26) that serve to encourage farmersin marginal areas, such as montane farming zones, from abandoning agriculture andthereby help to ensure the continuing cultivation of local biodiversity. More generally,agro-environmental grants and “ecological compensation” programmes have beenestablished by Council Parties to remunerate farmers for conservation activities, cultivationof traditional varieties, sowing indigenous wild plants in fallow lands and gardens,engaging in organic and integrated agriculture, safeguarding biotopes, and ascompensation for lost income caused by the abandoning of the practice of more intensiveresource use. More still could be done. It is estimated that Europe has lost 75% ofits plant genetic diversity within the last century and that the revitalisation of geneticand cultural diversity will depend upon support for organic plant breeding, the developmentof organically produced seeds and in situ management of a “diversity of culturalplants [which have] evolved from generation to generation, in hands of manyfarmers and in many different landscapes” (Wyss and Wiethaler, 2000: 37). On thesepoints, see Wyss and Wiethaler, 2000. The report provides information on the organicbreeding sector in all of the European Council Parties except Bulgaria. A database ofavailable organic seeds and a bulletin board for exchange of information on organicbreeding and propagation will be created at . For a series ofstudies on the importance of preserving agricultural genetic diversity in situ, see Brush,2000.14. The Swiss Federal Office of Agriculture, following upon the FAO’s World Plan ofAction, emphasised preserving the adaptive potential of cultivated plants. To this end,the Swiss Commission for the Conservation of Cultivated Plants has attempted toinventory all concerned institutions and the genetic material that they safeguard. TheMillennium Seedbank Project at the Royal Botanic Gardens in the United Kingdomboth banks and supports the reintroduction of plant species and the CommonwealthPotato Collection is also an important repository.15. Switzerland, for instance, has supported projects to conserve biological and culturaldiversity in the region of Lake Onrid, between Albania and Macedonia, in addition toother ecosystem management projects in Estonia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Russia. TheUK Darwin Initiative has supported the development of local expertise in peatlandmanagement in eastern Europe.16. The Belgian government, for example, has invested in regional environmental managementand database projects in west and central Africa (as well as in China and easternEurope) but the cultural dimensions of these initiatives are underdeveloped. The SwissAgency for Development and Co-operation, on the other hand, has a portfolio of thirty-188