Biodiversity
Biodiversity Threat
The steamroller of modern monoculture and factory farming is sweeping away our crop and domestic livestock diversity, putting future food production at risk.Linking Biodiversity and Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Food Security
Loss of Biodiversity in Livestock
(animal biodiversity)Rare Breeds Canada
an organization devoted to saving heritage livestock breeds
Wilderswil Declaration On Livestock Diversity
Wilderswil, Switzerland, 6 September 2007“We, representatives of 30 organizations of pastoralists, indigenous peoples, smallholder farmers and NGOs from 26 countries in both the North and the South came together in Wilderswil at our “Livestock Diversity Forum: Defending Food Sovereignty and Livestock Keepers’ Rights”. We met in parallel with FAO ’s International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources held in Interlaken.
We are here to fight for our rights as livestock keepers. We realize that we are just a small fraction of all the organizations that exist throughout the world. But we recognise that our struggle is common to the social organisations of nomadic pastoralists, herders, indigenous peoples and small farmers in both the North and South. Our main purpose of coming together was to further strengthen our movement and deepen our analysis and collaboration.”
Read the full document (pdf)
Additional resources
Danielle Nierenberg, "Farm animal diversity: Forgotten in Interlaken?", WorldWatch Institute, Washington DC, 11 September 2007.
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, "Global plan of action for animal genetic resources adopted: Agreement reached on implementation and financing provisions", FAO, Rome, 11 September 2007.
International Institute for Sustainable Development, "Summary of the first international technical conference on animal genetic resources for food and agriculture", Earth Negotiations Bulletin, IISD, Winnipeg, 10 September 2007.
Kimani Chege, "Ownership squabbles 'hindering' conservation", SciDev.Net, London, 7 September 2007.
Patrick Mulvany and Susanne Gura, "Reclaiming livestock keepers' rights", Seedling, GRAIN, Barcelona, January 2007.