ICARDA Caravan 4

so far, and distributes about 26,000 a year to scientists all over the world to use in crop breeding.

But this alone is not enough. We don't know how long we can store the material without it degenerating; moreover, while it is in a coldstore, it is not adapting to the changing world outside, which limits its usefulness in breeding. Just as important, genebanks cannot preserve more than a fraction of what we need to keep. Ex-situ conservation, as it is known, is important and has helped enormously, but we need in-situ conservation as well.

Conservation and Sustainable Use aims to do that, right in the environment to which we will need it to be adapted. That is part of the reason why scientists do not want to just create reservations for biodiversity; we need to use working farms, where the genetic material is tested by changes in farming practices and can be watched over by farmers who know what to look for. Anyway, simple reservations would dig too deep into scarce land resources. People must eat today, as well as tomorrow.

Conservation and Sustainable Use has been put together with Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, and a number of important institutions (see the blue box on the bottom of this Page). ICARDA will administer and coordinate the project, but will not spend the money; as the implementing bodies, the national programs will do that.

Total cost over five years will be roughly US$18.5 million, of which the crucial US$8 million core is expected to come from GEF, subject to remaining administrative and policy decisions. GEF is the Global Environment Facility, a financial mechanism providing grant and concessional funds to developing countries for projects and activities to protect the world's environment. By the end of 1991, the framework for action for the GEF gained the support of a sufficient number of countries to become a reality. At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, it was decided that GEF would operate the financial mechanisms for implementation of the Conventions on Climate Change and Biological Diversity. Today, responsibility for implementing the GEF is shared by UNDP, UNEP and the World Bank. Projects thus funded fall under four basic areas; climate change, biological diversity, international waters and ozone depletion.

GEF's contribution is the key to making the Conservation and Sustainable Use project fly; other generous contributions in cash and kind have been pledged on this basis.

Besides in-situ conservation at the eight sites, the project's objectives are to:

* Gather information on the genetic base of 10 target crops and the social and farming practices which affect them;

* Produce a working model for in-situ, on-farm conservation that can be repeated elsewhere in the world;

* Devise a broad range of policy measures that can safeguard and enable such work;

* Strengthen national capacities for the sustainable conservation of agrobiodiversity.

n hour or two's drive inland from the Syrian Mediterra-

nean coast, the Rift Valley finally runs out. Thousands of kilometers away in Kenya and Ethiopia, it is a deep slash in the landscape that takes hours even to descend by car. Here it is on a more modest scale. But the traveller still takes a long time to climb the edge. One follows a twisting series of hairpins up from the Ghab, the fertile valley fed by centuries of soil runoff from the hills above, and now irrigated so that it is a glaring emerald green in spring, a sharp contrast to the darker green of the forested hillsides that overlook it. Before long, the road is over a thousand meters above the valley floor and, in season, in cloud; here and there it may part to give a sudden glimpse of the Ghab itself or of the medieval castle that nestles at the foot of the valley. As winter draws in, the road can be treacherous with snow. It's an inspiring sight.

But we are not there to admire the scenery. For the mountains around Slenfeh in the Levantine Highlands of Western Syria are one of eight areas now designated as sites for in-situ conservation of dryland biodiversity.

Genetic material at this site which we can't afford to lose includes more than 500 species found in marginal areas and field borders, including wild relatives of forage crops (medics and vetches), wheat, olive, fruit and apricot. Even the forest area contains wild relatives of fruit trees. But cutting, deforestation, fire, overgrazing and agricultural expansion are all threats to their survival.

Herein lies the difficulty; West Asia is not wealthy, and scientists cannot go to farmers and ask them to restrict their activities because they think this barley spike or that ear of wheat may one day provide genes for the miracle crop of the future (even though it might). That is why, along with seven other sites in Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian National Authority and elsewhere in Syria, it is a focus for a project called Conservation and Sustainable Use of Dryland Agro-Biodiversity in the Near East. This project should start during 1997.

When crops get sick and can no longer cope with the pests, diseases and environmental stresses of the place where they are grown, two things happen. First of all, poor farmers get poorer. Secondly, crop breeders are forced to come up with a solution. More and more, they will "go back to the drawing board"--to the genetic material from which the crop was developed. (There are other reasons for using this material in breeding--see Three Among The Millions). This material could well be the wild plants, called wild relatives, descendants of those from which they were first grown up to 10,000 years ago. That is why we have to preserve agricultural biodiversity.

The broad region in which Slenfeh is situated, including Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, southeast Turkey and southern Iran, is a treasure-house of what can justifiably be called megadiversity. Many of today's food crops originated here, and we can still find their wild relatives in the area. These include lentil, pea, vetch, almond, olive and pistachio among others--and wheat and barley, upon which a third of the world depends.

This biodiversity can be preserved in genebanks. ICARDA does this, as do a number of national programs and institutions within the region. In fact, ICARDA's genebank is one of the world's biggest, with 110,000 accessions

An international partnership

A wide variety of organizations are contributing to Conservation and Sustainable Use of Dryland Agro-Biodiversity in the Near East. The governments of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority, who helped to put the project together, will be im-plementing agencies and will therefore be making an enormous contribution in kind as well as cash over the five years. Other financing institutions, besides GEF (to be confirmed), include ICARDA, IPGRI and the Arab Centre for the Study of Arid Zones and Dry Lands (ACSAD), an affiliated organization of the Arab League. All three have been involved in biodiversity conservation for some time, with ACSAD's work including farm animals as well as plants. IPGRI's actual reason for existence is biodiversity; its activities through its regional office at Aleppo have included the founding, in 1992, of the West Asia and North Africa Plant Genetic Resources Network (WANANET), which links national programs, identifies common problems in plant genetic resources and initiates collaborative work.

Other collaborating institutions in Conservation and Sustainable Use of Dryland Biodiversity include Wagenin-gen and Utrecht Universities in The Netherlands, the Universities of Birmingham and Reading, CAB Inter-national and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Britain, and the University of California and Washing-ton State University in the USA.