‘Biodiversity Status in Ethiopia and Challenges’ expounded by Azamal Hussen and Vinod Kumar Mishra, among others, indicates that there is an urgent need of mapping biodiversity in various environments, doing inventory, monitoring biodiversity and sharing global data. Conservation of genetic resources will assist genetic improvement of crop plants and livestock. Bio-prospecting-value addition on biodiversity will provide economic gain for the country.
However, necessary measures need to be initiated to safeguard the germplasms against potential threat of bio-piracy. National legislations-for access and benefit sharing, and trans-boundary movement of germplasms need to be ensured to safeguard the interest of the country too, according to the paper.
Moreover, the country needs to harmonize international and national laws in biodiversity conservation. A new thrust in biotechnology, nanotechnology and information and communication technology can help technologies to resolve key concerns related to agriculture: enabling food safety, controlling plant and animal diseases, ensuring environmental safety and sustainable use of natural resources, it added.
Laeke-Mariam Demessie in his article entitled “Biodiversity and Bio-piracy in the case of Ethicon,” pointed out that Bio-diversity conservation and bio-piracy are hot issues of debate and dialogue between the techno-rich Northern developed and the Bio-diversity rich Southern developing countries in the international forums.
Despite losses of Bio-diversity due to environmental degradation, which includes deforestation, insecurity of land tenure among others, Ethiopia is still considered one of the eight gene centers in the world for crop diversity. According to renowned Ethiopian geneticist Dr. Melaku Werede, “Ethiopia is a major world center of genetic diversity for many important domesticated crop plant species such as sorghum, barley, teff, chickpeas, coffee, barely represented in the country by land races which are uniquely adapted genetically diverse forms of these various crops. The genetic diversity found in Ethiopia’s land races has been used worldwide. It is used as sources in developing new crop varieties or solving stresses representing acute yield the constraining problems.”
Dr. Melaku, observing that Ethiopia’s genetic resource could be eroded and lost due to drought, environmental degradation and other factors found a Gene Bank in Addis Ababa, the first of its kind in Africa in 1985.
Ethiopia in particular and the Horn of Africa in general endowed by nature, happen to be one of the eight great genetics centers of the world. This puts the Horn of Africa in focus in the North South debate on the controversial issues of access to genetic resources, intellectual property rights, community and indigenous knowledge right over their biological resources.
When the Russian plant geneticist N.I Vavilov arrived in Ethiopia and neighboring countries in the 1920s, he was amazed. In Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somaliland, he found so much genetic diversity that he included the area in the list of few great centers of crop plant diversity and called it the Abyssinian gene center. Virtually the whole of complex of seed crops from South West Asia and Mediterranean centers of crop origin were found there.
On wheat variation Vavilo says that “Abyssinian occupies the first place” and on barely that there is an exceptional diversity of forms. But then he also found impressive diversity of native African crops (such as Teff) and of sorghum, millets and many grain legumes, oil crops, vegetable, spices and other spices.
The Ethiopian Genetic Resources Center now known as the Bio-diversity Institute has 54 thousand accessions of different crops conserved to date. Besides, Ethiopia possesses, 7 thousand species of higher plant. So far identified and 12 percent of them are endemic said Sue Edwards an ecologist and senior researcher at Addis Ababa University, he said.
Above all Ethiopian scientists had observed that gene bank conservation had its own limitation. Because genes conserved in the bank can die and their dynamism with climate changes and other natural factors get arrested. Which means they stop evolutionary process and adaptation to changing conditions. Hence, the scientists created out on-farm-community gene bank on farmers’ plots.
Moreover, Dr. Melaku a pioneer in the on farm conservation of Biodiversity, argues that “much of this diversity is found in small fields belonging to the peasants who aided by nature, have played and continue to play a central role in the creation, maintenance and use of this invaluable resources.
From the scientific facts narrated above, we realize that Ethiopia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world in biodiversity. But the question is who benefits most from Ethiopia’s genetic resources?
Of course, Biodiversity came in to the public vocabulary since the Earth summit in June 1992.The definition is not yet to be found in most dictionaries. Biodiversity convention has come up with several definitions.
But a more elaborate definition by Ragasa Feyissa of the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute hints “Biodiversity is the variety of living forms consisting variations within and among species, including the variety of ecological system, the number and types of species and ecological system the species inhabit. It is more than the number and the type of species. Ecological system also includes human cultures ecological requirements and processes which further shaped it, he said.
Much of today’s wealth of biodiversity on earth is the product of millions of years of evolutionary process, and provides human with valuable services and benefits of various kinds to specifically address the important subset of biodiversity that contributes to agriculture. A term agro–biodiversity has been coined at present.
According to Laeke, agro–biodiversity refers to the diversity in agricultural crops and microorganisms and farming systems and cultural practices that all together support the productivity of agro-ecological system, organisms responsible for crop pollination, genes important for the development of improved crop varieties and livestock’s brides and microorganism that maintain soil fertility are all important components of biological diversity that contribute to agriculture diversity in all these of fundamental importance to sustainable economic development.
He further said that Bio-piracy, bio prospecting, gene–hunting are terms used by environmentalists and third world groups and Northern NGO’s to describe the search for natural products of potential value to industry, particularly in the pharmaceutical and agri-business fields. It reflects the grievances, anger and emotion to the unfair relations between the greed of Northern Trans national companies and the Bio diversity rich Southern developing countries and the poor peasant farmers who for over ten thousand years cultivated, developed and invented the raw materials.
According to World Food Organization (WFO)” over 90 percent of the plant species are located in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The world’s rich industrial nations are poor in bio diversity and are dependent on exploiting the South’s genetic resources.
Nonetheless, it would be important here to explain why the techno-rich countries of the north are biodiversity poor and the southern techno and cash poor countries are biodiversity rich. The techno–rich countries of the northern have been practicing mono-crop culture, which depends on high-yielding mechanically harvested, dependent on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, planted over a large area.
Even though the mono–cropped planted with the same variety crop has the advantage of surplus production it also has its own misgivings. Among its misgivings is found loss of biodiversity and heavy drop failure when the bio engineered uniforms or mono crop is hit by a certain plant diseases frost among others. The on crops are highly vulnerable to pests and disease. They have no resistance because of their lack of genetic variation. When attacked by certain disease since they are uniform devoid of variations they get totally wiped out, assert scientists, he said.
BY ALAZAR SHIFERAW
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD MAY 28/2021
