The silent casualties of war - impact of warfare on crop biodiversity

By destroying local seed supply systems, warfare in the developing world jeopardizes the crop biodiversity on which sustainable agriculture depends

I Moved by the human tragedy of war, we often overlook one of the other major casualties - the environment and, more specifically, agriculture. Globally, the number of armed conflicts has been rising steadily since 1945, reaching an estimated 30 major and 80 to 100 minor conflicts today.

Unlike high-tech wars involving well-armed industrial countries, many of these conflicts are low-intensity insurrections in rural areas, where farmers are the victims. Here, directly or indirectly, local seed systems may come under stress or even collapse. Apart from jeopardizing immediate food needs, the very sustainability of local agriculture can be threatened, with potentially serious consequences for the variety of genetic resources.

Biodiversity is often assessed in terms of the number of existing species. But, at least for crop plants, the genetic variation within species is equally important. Although there are half a million flowering plant species, (only half of which have been named and described), 95 per cent of human calorie and protein requirements come from a mere 30 of the 7,000 edible plant species that humans plant or collect. And more than half the global energy intake comes from just three major crops - rice, wheat and maize. Genetic variation enables farmers and agricultural scientists to continue to adapt these key crops to changing circumstances - critical for our long-term survival. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), there are as many as 100,000 distinct varieties of Asian rice (Oryza sativa) alone.

But what happens to seed systems when they are repeatedly disrupted by war? Farmers use several kinds of seed from different sources. They are mainly varieties taken from their previous harvests, adapted to local conditions and managed over many generations, or seeds from other regions obtained through small local markets or by exchange. Farmers also use varieties developed by research in national or multinational centres and purchased annually through formal supply networks.

Vulnerable local seed varieties

Conflict affects the supply of these kinds of seeds in different ways - and with different long-term consequences for biodiversity. For the formal (non-local) varieties, the supply of seed may dry up in times of conflict, for example because transport routes are disrupted, or because the pesticides and fertilizers needed to grow these varieties have become unavailable. This is what happened in Rwanda, when the formal potato system stopped functioning countrywide around 1991-1992 - although direct combat only spread two years later.

Usually, when peace returns, these formal varieties become available once again and there are few new varietal concerns. The war in Bosnia caused a breakdown in the supply of crops. But it now appears that there were relatively few adverse genetic consequences. This is because farmers were using registered varieties supplied through formal channels. Registered seeds are likely to be backed up in collections in a number of countries. A multinational seed business caught in a war zone simply withdraws for the time being and continues its business elsewhere, with its seed collections intact.

More vulnerable in the long term are the local varieties. These may be ancient varieties, often unrecorded and at the heart of complex social interactions. Local or farmer-managed seed systems tend to be decentralized and small scale. The seeds can be obtained from small open markets, or as the currency of gift-giving, loans and exchange among people with firm social bonds.

In many African countries, up to 90 per cent of the seeds planted in any normal year comes from informal sources. Even where purchase (for example, from local merchants) is an important part of an informal seed system, it is rarely backed up by the kind of specialist seed research facilities found in more developed economies. In war-affected Sierra Leone, for example, a recent study showed that the informal system was responsible in normal years for about 80 per cent of seed supply for the main staple, rice. Most informal transactions were farmer-to-farmer, in the form of gifts, purchases, and loans. In Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire, before their respective wars, over 95 per cent of bean seeds, their main protein source, came from informal seed systems.

When rural communities are forced to flee, the fine web of mutual seed support is wrecked. Refugee farmers no longer have the means to repay at harvest the seeds they borrowed from fellow-farmers in the planting season, so the system breaks down. Without the security of peace, rural communities cannot hold the markets to buy and sell seed. And farmers no longer know that what they plant can indeed be harvested in four, nine or 18 months' time (the cycles of beans, potatoes and cassava, respectively). Seed may be totally lacking, or farmers may be unable to access it, because social ties are ruptured, or because they are just too poor. In some cases, farmers under fire may have stored appropriate seed, but simply cannot plant it. Alternatively, seed may be available, but of poor quality.

Genetic loss, then, is most likely when conflict is concentrated in remote rural areas, where it is fairly widespread geographically, and when it lasts for several years in succession. This was the case in Angola and Mozambique, where isolated and vulnerable rural populations lost many planting seasons. War has affected fourteen African countries during the 1990s, with rural populations most heavily dependent on locally adapted seeds being the major casualties.

Some countries are especially rich in local varieties and the wild relatives of crop species. The breakdown of local seed systems in these countries can cause irreversible damage to the global genetic resources of food crops. For example, major wars in Guinea Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone, along with lesser insurrections in Casamance (Senegal) and Guinea have affected every country in the West African coastal zone of ancient rice agriculture. This region is a key centre for genetic diversity in African rice (Oryza glaberrima), which, as a result of recent technological advances, can now be cross-bred with Asian rice, one of the world's key food crops. It will be of global significance if this under-collected and little-studied African crop is a casualty of the regional warfare and massive displacement of rural civilians.

So what can be done to offset this kind of genetic disaster? During the Tigrean conflicts in the northern highlands of Ethiopia, that lasted on and off for two decades, community elders organized emergency seed banks of maize, sorghum, wheat, barley, finger millet and teff - an annual grass grown for its grain. This was mostly to improve the deteriorating seed quality, rather than because of short supply. In Ethiopia, a country with rich local varieties, plant scientists have invested in crop genetic resource conservation and in understanding the impact of war and drought on seed supply.

Ironically, humanitarian agencies often make the situation worse, by responding to seed system breakdown by supplying farmers with seed from outside the country: Giving "seed and tools" is the standard second relief response after food. Seed aid is usually "exotic", not tested or suited to local conditions and is alien to the cultural management practices of farmers.

In some countries there are national efforts to restore crop diversity lost due to war. International Agricultural Research Centres have been restoring bean and sorghum genetic material to gene banks in war-torn Rwanda and Burundi, local varieties of barley, durum wheat and bread wheat to Eritrea and rice seeds to institutes in the trouble-spots of Liberia and Guinea Bissau - and even Cambodia. All these countries lost their centralized gene bank stocks, although it is not known if there was any loss of diversity at farm level.

To reinforce this kind of work, some regions, such as the West African zone of ancient rice cultivation, will need specialist missions to rescue and conserve endangered local varieties. This will mean gathering information on cultural and farming practices, too. War threatens not only seeds but also the knowledge that farming populations possess about how, where and when to use locally-adapted local varieties.

It is difficult to estimate the true scale of crop biodiversity loss in war-torn regions. For several decades, small farmers have given oral accounts of significant variety loss. It is only now, with the development of biotechnologies, that plant scientists have the tools to measure genetic losses precisely.

COPYRIGHT 1999 UNESCO
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