National systematic CWR conservation planning

What do you need to decide before starting CWR conservation planning?

Prior to start planning CWR conservation [to be integrated into a National Strategic Action Plan for CWR conservation and use (NSAP)], several options regarding the scope and the approach to be undertaken need to be defined.

Option 1 – Floristic or monographic approach

Taking the floristic or monographic approach refers to the breadth of coverage of the conservation strategy. A floristic approach means that a conservation strategy is developed for all CWR diversity that occurs in a defined geographic area. This may be a sub-national area such as an administrative unit or protected area, a whole country, a supra-national region, or even the whole world. A monographic approach on the other hand is restricted to certain crop gene pools but, like the floristic approach, may be carried out at any geographic scale.

Both approaches will ultimately conclude with the systematic conservation of priority CWR diversity via a network of in situ conservation sites, with back-up in ex situ collections. Whether a floristic or monographic approach is taken is likely to depend on (a) the quantity and quality of existing data, (b) the resources available to prepare the conservation strategy, and (c) the scope of the parent organization undertaking the conservation (for example, an international cereal research institute is likely to focus monographically on cereal crops, while a national biodiversity institute is likely to adopt a more floristic approach).

Option 2 – Local, national, regional or global geographic scales

CWR conservation strategies should ideally be complementary, depending on the geographical units included, even though the individual geographic scale is likely to be dictated by the remit of the parent organization undertaking the conservation. There is a need to develop interacting CWR conservation strategies, such that one geographic level strategy is not seen in isolation, but contributes to the other levels. For example, a country’s national CWR conservation strategy should link with local, regional and ultimately the global strategy such that nationally designated genetic reserve sites become part of a combined network of sites overseen at national level, but managed at local level (individual genetic reserves), as well as being part of a regional and global network overseen by the appropriate regional and global agencies. Therefore, it is not a choice between geographic scales, but the real choice is whether or not to ensure complementarity in approach between interacting CWR conservation strategies to ensure they form a series of local, national, regional and global in situ CWR conservation sites.

Option 3 – Centralized or participatory conservation

It is difficult to precisely categorize the contribution of local communities and farmers versus conservationists to address global food security. While an overview is required to identify CWR diversity hotspots and implement genetic reserve conservation in a network that maximizes the conserved CWR diversity for the benefit of all humanity, it is equally important to recognize that on-farm or genetic reserve conservation is impossible without local community or farmer approval and action. It is perhaps inevitable that targeted global conservation involves a top-down approach, but local communities have been managing, manipulating and exploiting CWR diversity for millennia and so maintaining a complementary bottom-up approach is equally important. Therefore, just as CWR conservation at local, national, regional and global scales interact to ensure effective complementary conservation, both centralized and participatory approaches to conservation also ensure effective complementary conservation.

Option 4 – Farmer or conservationist based in situ conservation

At first it might be thought that farmers play a minimal role in CWR conservation. However, experience from the limited number of projects that have established genetic reserves (e.g. Firat and Tan 1997, Hunter and Heywood 2011) has shown that even where genetic reserves are established in association with existing protected areas, farmers are commonly involved. The reason being that many CWR are found in pre-climax vegetation so population conservation requires controlled grazing or cutting. Therefore, even when undertaking genetic reserve CWR conservation, it commonly involves conservationists working with farmers.

Option 5 – Status quo or legislative protection

To promote sustainable in situ CWR conservation there is a need to encourage and facilitate stronger legislative protection of sites designated for conservation. Experience from ecosystem and wild species conservation has repeatedly shown that the establishment of protected areas requires significant investment of resources and, once established, legislative protection is required to ensure the long-term sustainability of the conservation investment. This protection is equally applicable for sites designated as genetic reserves where the status quo without specific protection is unviable. This is particularly important for sites designated in Vavilov Centres of Origin, all of which are located in developing countries, which are likely to contain the highest proportion of unique CWR diversity that we know is threatened and must be conserved if we are to seriously address global food security.

Option 6 – In situ or ex situ conservation

In situ and ex situ conservation should not be viewed as alternatives or in opposition to one another but rather should be practised as complementary approaches. The adoption of this holistic approach requires the conservationist to look at the characteristics and needs of the CWR being conserved and then to assess which combination of techniques offers the most appropriate option to maintain genetic diversity. Hawkes et al. (2000) suggested that to formulate the conservation strategy, the conservationist may also need to address not only genetic questions but also the practical and political ones:

• What are the species’ storage characteristics?
• What do we know about the species’ breeding system?
• Do we want to store the germplasm in the short, medium or long term?
• Where is the germplasm located and how accessible is it/does it need to be?
• Are there legal issues relating to access?
• How good is the infrastructure of the genebank?
• What back-up is necessary/desirable?
• How might the resource be best exploited?

Given answers to these questions, the appropriate combination of techniques to conserve CWR can then be applied in a pragmatic and balanced manner.

Option 7 – Conservation or conservation linked to use

Historically, there have been two camps of thought in biodiversity conservation—those who see conservation as an end in its self (e.g. see McNeely and Guruswamy 1998) and those who believe there should be a direct and intimate link between conservation and use (humans conserve diversity because they wish to exploit it) (Maxted et al. 1997). This utilitarian concept is fundamental to PGRFA conservation where the goal is to ensure that the maximum possible genetic diversity of CWR diversity is maintained and available for potential utilization.

Source: Maxted et al. (2011)

Current status of CWR conservation planning

In the past 15 years, knowledge of CWR diversity has significantly increased, particularly through activities undertaken within the context of some notable EU-funded projects (PGR Forum, AEGRO, PGR Secure and the SADC CWR project) and the GEF-funded project, In situ Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives through Enhanced Information Management and Field Application; there have also been recent advances under the auspices of the Crop Trust.

Fundamental to this increase in knowledge has been the development of an agreed definition of a CWR (Maxted et al. 2006), which has enabled the identification of the breadth of taxonomic CWR diversity at national, regional and global levels, as well as providing the foundation for prioritizing CWR taxa for conservation action. However, initial studies have shown that CWR diversity found in nature is seriously threatened, with significant taxonomic and genetic diversity loss currently occurring.

At the taxon level, Red List assessments of CWR have increased our understanding of the main pressures threatening CWR populations (Bilz et al. 2011, Kell et al. 2012), and indirectly—at the genetic level—it is recognized that the loss of taxonomic diversity is an under-representation of the loss of genetic diversity (Maxted et al. 1997). Techniques for identifying diversity within taxa, both within and among populations, as well as techniques for conservation gap analysis, have diversified and are being enhanced through targeted research on CWR, and are greatly facilitating the production of national CWR and crop gene pool conservation strategies (for examples, see here as well as Maxted and Kell 2009; also see Iriondo et al. (2016) and Labokas (2016) for a review on progress in national CWR conservation planning in the European region). Furthermore, recent investigations have highlighted the global centres of CWR diversity (Castañeda-Álvarez et al. 2016) and for the first time have identified where CWR in situ conservation actions should be focused in a global context (Vincent et al. 2017). These recent advances have provided a solid foundation for the development of a strategic approach to CWR conservation planning at the national, regional and global levels, that is based on a range of commonly agreed and widely tested scientific concepts and techniques.