Approaches to Biodiversity Management in Agriculture

The concept of biodiversity, particularly its definitions and benefits to humans and natural endowments, has been discussed. Emphasis has also been placed on the effective management of bio-resources with many strategies employed.

In this article, efforts are further stressed on the approaches that are being adopted to control and manage biodiversity.

In-Situ Approach for Biodiversity Conservation

This approach is very popular among ecologists and conservationists who use it to protect habitats and ecosystems. Simply, the approach uses methods and tools to protect species, genetic varieties, and habitats in the wild.

It ensures that the cherished varieties or species of plants do not go into extinction. The usefulness of the species notwithstanding, both the beneficial and the less beneficial are collectively protected.

Ex-Situ Approach for Species Preservation

This approach is concerned with the deliberate and selective removal of plants, animals, and microbial species, and genetic varieties from their original environment.

What agriculturalists and species-orientated biologists do is attributable to this approach. The ultimate goal for the use of this approach is for the maintenance of samples of species.

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Restoration and Rehabilitation Approach for Ecosystem Recovery

As the name implies, the approach combines the use of the earlier described approaches, that is, in-situ and ex-situ to achieve its objective.

The combined approaches are used to re-establish species, genetic varieties, communities, populations, habitats, and ecological processes.

Ecological restoration is concerned with the reconstruction of natural and semi-natural ecosystems on degraded lands. This approach, therefore, includes the reintroduction of most native species, while ecological rehabilitation is concerned with the repair of ecosystem processes.

Major Land-Use Approach in Agricultural and Natural Resource Management

This approach is popular with the tools and strategies as used by those in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, wildlife management, and tourism.

This is because these fields make use of extensive land and in the process incorporate protection, sustainable use, and equity criteria and guidelines as management objectives and practices.

These approaches dominate most landscapes and the near shore coastal zone and so offer the greatest reward for investments in biodiversity management.

Policy and Institutional Approach for Biodiversity Governance

The main focus of this approach is the establishment of easements and the arrangements between public agencies and private interests that are seeking to establish landscape characteristics favourable to biodiversity.

The approach works by limiting the use of incentives and tax policies to foster particular land use practices and to create and enforce land tenure arrangements that promote effectiveness and sustainability.

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Multi-Stakeholder Approach for Collaborative Biodiversity Conservation

Multi-stakeholder processes are an important tool for creating lasting solutions for biodiversity conservation. Essentially, they are a process by which different interest groups whether governments, businesses, agriculturalists, or real estate developers consult to create a plan to achieve a particular objective.

Though multi-stakeholder processes may vary widely in scope and scale, they have certain elements in common. Typically, they are based on the democratic principles of transparency and participation.

Transparency, as used in a social science context, means that all negotiations and dialogue take place openly, information is freely shared, and participants are held responsible for their actions before, during, and after the process.

The ethic of participation recognises that without all stakeholders present, solutions will not accurately address real-life pressures, and thus may not succeed.

Rural people, and particularly those who are native to the land where they live (indigenous or aboriginal people), are important stewards of biodiversity (see box: “Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities and Biodiversity”).

Unfortunately, very often it is precisely these people who are left out of the conversation over land rights and resource management. Stakeholders who have more capital (business) or prominence (government) frequently overshadow the voices of the rural poor.

The people who have lived on the land for many generations hold invaluable storehouses of information about native varieties of plants and animals, microclimates for growing specific crops, and uses of medicinal herbs.

Often these same people are dependent upon these resources for survival and have developed complex systems for maintaining the biodiversity that benefits their day-to-day lives.

Indigenous peoples and local communities (ILCs) have a special relationship with nature in general and local plants and animals in particular, which makes them important partners of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Indigenous peoples and local communities have lived in harmony with nature and looked after the Earth’s biological diversity for a long time. Their diverse cultures and languages represent much of humanity’s cultural diversity.

Respect for, and promotion of, the knowledge, innovations, and practices of ILCs will be central to efforts to save life on Earth.

An interesting example to illustrate the important role of indigenous peoples in maintaining biodiversity can be found in the wet tropics of far northeastern Australia.

The traditional Aboriginal people of the rain forests, called the Yalanji, have practiced fire management in the wet tropics for thousands of years.

As a direct result of creating clearings in the jungle, grazing animals such as the kangaroo and wallabies moved into the forests from the western plain.

The fire management practices of the Yalanji also encouraged the regrowth of different species of plants and fungi in these clearings.

Biodiversity management requires deliberate effort at making the species and varieties of the bio-resources in a particular environment.

The evolving effective strategies that are being used include the in-situ approach, the ex-situ approach, the restoration and rehabilitation approach, the major land-use approach, the policy and institutional approach, and the multi-stakeholder approach.

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