The burden of proof

Attended a seminar yesterday by Professor Tim Johns, Professor in Human Nutrition at McGill University and former Director of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment at McGill. Tim is currently spending a sabbatical period at Bioversity to further develop the Biodiversity and Nutrition initiative and also represents Bioversity on the CGIAR’s Agriculture and Health Research Platform. Tim discussed the evolving Biodiversity and Nutrition strategy in light of work on neglected and underutilized species/leafy vegetables, dietary diversity, public health benefits, market chains, food systems and ecohealth and the unique space that agrobiodiversity occupies between agriculture, health and nutrition and environment. This clearly presents many opportunities which need to be actively pursued, such as the role of agrobiodiversity and HIV/Aids.

The main take home message was the lack of a solid evidence-base for the role of agrobiodiversity in health and nutrition. As Tim highlighted ‘ the case is just not there’ and it needs to be if those of us who work with agrobiodiversity are to change the attitudes of donors and relevant organisations. What is the role of agrobiodiversity in child malnutrition, diabetes, eye health? According to Tim we just don’t really know. There was much talk about building a solid and cohesive body of proof involving convincing cases for the role of agrobiodiversity in nutrition and health. Yes, certainly. But I couldn't help but think that the challenge is even greater than this and one could stress the need to argue the case, or construct a convincing body of proof, for the role of agrobiodiversity in sustainable livelihoods, ecosystem services, agricultural production and stability and resilience of agroecosystems. Data and information certainly exists but wouldn’t it be nice to have it packaged in one form or another that really makes a convincing case so the agrobiodiversity community can counteract the pessimists who argue that such links are tenuous.

By the way, I couldn't help but notice that COHAB was absent from the list of partners, current and potential, in the presentation. I am sure they are in there somewhere, given that Bioversity is a partner in that initiative. Interestingly COHAB currently have a 'request for information' to build a body of evidence for the relationship between biodiversty change and the incidence of certain non-communicable diseases (NCDs).