Drylands: Tropical America
Background
Kew’s current research programme in Tropical America evolved out of several decades of collaboration with botanists in the NE of Brazil, beginning in 1974 and involving, in particular, partnerships with the Centro de Pesquisas do Cacau (CEPEC) and the Universidade de São Paulo (USP). In 1992 the work was consolidated under a major collaborative programme, Plantas do Nordeste (PNE), which was implemented in partnership with a consortium of research and teaching institutes in NE Brazil. The PNE Association (APNE) was created in Recife in 1994 to co-ordinate this programme, and since 1995 the Brazilian Government has contributed with major grants for training purposes through its National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). This was followed in 1998-9 by grants from the UK Government (Department for International Development) for PNE’s Information, Dissemination and Training Sub-programme and another PNE project on field guide design methodology.
Responding to in-country requirements and priorities, Kew’s work in Brazil has become increasingly focused on local capacity building and the development of projects promoting conservation and sustainable use of plant resources. This has manifested itself through the establishment of grant schemes for research and training for Brazilian botanists, data repatriation and information dissemination (including publications on sustainable use and conservation), species conservation evaluations and collaborative, targeted research, primarily in collaboration with PNE and its member institutes. Building on the successes of and lessons from these ongoing projects, Kew is working to develop its role within the wider context of Tropical America, maintaining a focus principally on dry and semi-arid environments and on applied, conservation-focused research. The current target of this expansion is Bolivia: a country with extremely high (yet comparatively poorly known) biodiversity and limited capacity for botanical research.
Strengthening an already applied focus
Over the past ten years Kew’s work in Tropical America, particularly in NE Brazil, has maintained a strong emphasis on the development of information resources supporting conservation and sustainable plant use. This has been accompanied by the establishment of mechanisms for taking research results into the community and aligning them to the needs of local organisations working to conserve biodiversity, foster sustainable development and alleviate poverty. These objectives are reflected in PNE’s slogan ‘local plants for local people’.
In situ conservation, which is inevitably and inextricably linked with sustainable use, has been identified as the primary target for Kew’s work in Tropical America. Development of an increasingly applied research programme, with concrete conservation objectives, requires a re-evaluation of our overall approach. Kew’s research in Tropical America has always been strongly collaborative, working primarily with herbaria, universities and other botanical research institutes in NE Brazil. Strong collaboration is particularly important in the context of applied research, not only with organisations working in the same field but also with those offering complementary skills and experience.
Our objective is to develop and target our core strengths and expertise in such a way that their impact on biodiversity conservation is maximised. To this end we are developing increasingly strong working partnerships with local and international organisations and landowners requiring specific botanical support for the establishment of management plans and conservation measures in important areas for plant biodiversity.
Another consequence of this development is the increasing need to consider plants as vegetation communities rather than species, which in turn necessitates the strengthening and development of skills such as vegetation mapping, phytosociology and quantitative analysis within both Kew and its partner organisations. This has been identified as an institutional requirement for successful achievement of our 2d Key Measure (Total habitat conservation assessments supported through contributions of information or advice per calendar year), and is currently being addressed by the development of an internal training programme and the allocation of staff to appropriate external courses.
In parallel with these developments, and in line with our institutional 2c Key Measure (Total species use, species conservation assessments and species conservation plans supported per calendar year), we are working to strengthen our role in the evaluation of species conservation status through input into the IUCN red-listing mechanism. This process is important for the identification of conservation priorities in the region, and is becoming an increasingly significant element of our taxonomic research projects in Latin America.
Broadening the geographic scope
Kew’s long-term commitment of resources to the drylands of NE Brazil, and the concomitant development of well established partnerships with local research organisations, have enabled the achievement of a series of objectives that would not have been feasible had the input been more transient or less collaborative. These achievements have included development of strong capacity for botanical research within our Brazilian partner organisations, a comprehensive knowledge of the flora of the region, strategically targeted information resources and research networks, and a wide range of dissemination outputs designed to promote the sustainable use and conservation of plant resources.
We have now reached a point where many of our long-term goals in the region have been achieved, and responsibility for ongoing research and development initiatives has been successfully transferred to local partners. Although our Neotropical research programme remains focused primarily on Brazil, and includes ongoing projects and collaboration in the NE, we are now working to strengthen our existing programme in Bolivia.
Bolivia is one of the most important countries for biodiversity conservation in Latin America, not only because the ecosystems in many areas are still pristine but also because it contains about 18,000 species of plants and 1,274 species of birds (very high for a landlocked country). It has a high index of endemism (approximately 33% of the 1,500 orchid species so far recorded are endemic to the country), and many of the forest and natural grassland habitats that have been greatly reduced in neighbouring countries (notably Brazil and Argentina) are still relatively extensive there. The principal threat to most of Bolivia's rare species is loss or degradation of the natural habitats upon which they depend. By far the most serious and widespread cause of habitat loss is deforestation, particularly in the eastern slopes of the Andes, the eastern (Santa Cruz) lowlands, and the Amazonian lowlands.
Kew’s previous experience in Bolivia includes collaborative work on the development of monographs for Gramineae and Leguminosae. For the past three years Kew has also been involved in a long-term research programme supported by the Darwin Initiative, working to identify areas of high endemism and botanical diversity in the Central Andean Valleys. In the process of this research, our Bolivian herbarium collections have been greatly strengthened by the addition of several thousand specimens, as has our network of contacts and collaborators. We are thus in a strong position to develop an applied, conservation-focused research programme that matches our institutional goals and capacity.