A Participatory Agrobiodiversity Conservation Approach in the Oases: Community Actions for the Promotion of Sustainable Development in Fragile Areas

Rural development policies today include significant directions towards ecological transition and sustainability. Biodiversity plays a fundamental role, especially in fragile environments. The North African oases, for example, are socio-ecological structures with delicate balances in terms of natural resources, where the activation of participatory conservation approaches appears today to be very useful, aiming at long-lasting results. This type of approach was applied in the oasis of El Hamma, in Tunisia. The socio-ecological analysis was carried out through semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders of the oasis. The results were used to activate focus groups and to identify, in a participatory way, a conservation strategy for the species and the varieties at risk of erosion or disappearing. From this research, a wide spread of non-traditional date palm and vegetables emerged in a very diverse social context. These products were recognized as highly significant in terms of traditional knowledge by all stakeholders. Therefore, a Maison des semences and a public conservation center for perennial species were created, representing the first step of a participatory conservation model. Seeds of 11 traditional annual species, 10 date palm varieties and, in perspective, many other fruit species and vegetable varieties have been introduced into conservation.

Positioning of Murut and Bajau identities in state forest reserves and marine parks in Sabah, East Malaysia

This article, which looks at Indigenous communities in the multiethnic, multicultural region of Sabah, East Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, argues that indigeneity is not primordial, but exists in relation to dominant identities as well as other non-dominant, Indigenous groups. Moreover, Indigenous Peoples are not passive recipients of colonial or even postcolonial Othering: their identity is contextualised and contested within majority–minority relations. The article begins with a brief history of the dominant Kadazandusun nationalism in Sabah, in the context of the overarching Bumiputra policy of Malaysia, which privileges constructed Malayness, as background to the discourses and practices of smaller groups of land-based Murut and the sea-oriented ‘Bajau’, where identity switching is taking place in tandem with environmental justice claims. The land-based communities (Murut) have found leverage in making identity and livelihood claims attached to place (here, state-declared forest reserves that seek to exclude them) in line with the recent global environmental justice focus on participatory conservation rather than the older ‘fortress conservation’ model still dominant in state conservation thinking. However, the sea-oriented peoples (Bajau) require other social symbols than land for making their identity claims, in this instance, via claims to ‘modern’ livelihoods and as managers of marine resources with reference to the newly established Tun Mustapha Park. In Sabah, participatory conservation is being reappropriated by Indigenous Peoples to assert claims about place and /or livelihoods; if bureaucratised, however, this form of conservation might turn out to be less than participatory.

Assessing maize diversity and defining a representative subset by means of selected morphological ear traits

The objectives of this study were to analyse the maize diversity in the southeast of Coahuila State in Mexico and to identify a representative subset that encompasses the majority of the diversity in the region of study. Seventy-seven native maize populations were first explored and given a race classification followed by a morphological description based on selected quantitative ear traits using 10 representative ears from the collected samples. The differences between maize populations from the adaptation area and the relationships between and within groups in the region of study indicate the usefulness of the ear traits to describe maize diversity. Two main groups were identified that summarized the maize diversity. The first group, the conical ear complex, includes populations adapted to highland altitudes (Conico Norteño Race). The second group, the cylindrical ear complex, represents populations adapted to lowland and intermediate altitudes (Raton and Tuxpeño Norteño). Using the phenogram, a subset of 18 out of the 77 maize populations (23.4%) was defined that accounts for the variation between and within the different race complexes. This subset also includes at least one representative population from each of the less represented types. The final subset, representing a sample of maize diversity, can be used to establish strategies for conservation and use, such as participatory conservation and management, or it can be used to develop breeding techniques for improving the land race populations within the region of study.