PANEL DISCUSSION ON BIODIVERSTY AND AGRICULTURE

PANEL DISCUSSION ON

BIODIVERSTY AND AGRICULTURE:

Enhancing the Understanding 0f Biodiversity

Beyond the Biodiversity Circle

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Indonesia has joined the global community to managing her biological diversity by ratifying the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1994.  Since then Indonesia has actively implement the agreed program of works of the CBD.  However, the mainstreaming of biodiversity in the national development has not been fully successful.  In other words,  those who understand the importance of biological diversity are mainly biologists and conservationists.

Indonesia is an agriculture country.  Almost 50% of her population depend their life on agriculture (forestry, fishery, and plants/animals management).  It is an alarming facts that biological resources of Indonesia, which are essential for agriculture development, are decreasing with time.  It is true that in the past 15 years the needs to conserve  biological diversity, be it in natural forests or in marine and coastal  areas,  has been socialized.  However, in the sector of agriculture  (the widest sense), biological diversity has not received attention as it should.

In the appendix of Decision VI/26 : Strategic Plan for the  Convention on Biological Diversity, i.e., Obstacles to the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity there are  eight listed items.  It becomes obvious that political and societal obstacles has resulted in lack of mainstreaming and integration of biodiversity issues into other sectors.  Accordingly.  the proposed activity will analyze this issue and identify ways and means to elevate the understanding of biological diversity for long term national development.  Within this long term view, conservation is the key element..  Moreover. since those who are engaged in agricultural activities are in general small scale farmers whose income is less than US $2,-/a day, the proposed activity will identify which group of biological diversity become top priority  to be dealt with in term of utilization and conservation.  

Research Centre for biology - LIPI with PROSEA and NATURINDO will held a panel discussion on BIODIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURE in Bogor, Kusnoto Building 6^th Fl., Jl. Ir. H. Juanda 18, Bogor, Indonesia. (more).

The speaker on this discussion will be Impelementation of CBD in Indonesia: Dr. Aca Soegandhi; What do we expect from the biodiversity richness for the agriculture: Dr. Justika Baharsyah; The utilization of biodiversity at the local and national level: Dr. Anugerah Nontji; The importance of biodiversity education for agriculture purposes: Prof. Dr. Roedy Purwanto.

After the panel discussion we would like to analyze and synthesize  the outcome of  the panel discussion and then we plan to have workshop to identify topics on agricultural Biological Diversity for general readers. We expected to have an expert meeting for the preparation of the manuscript for Agricultural Biodiversity in Indonesia on August 2008.