The mission of the Global Crop Diversity Trust is to ensure the long-term conservation and use of crop diversityi for food security worldwide. contents Photography Credits CIAT (Pages i, 5, 13, 19, 20, 23), CIMMYT (Cover, Pages 4, 7, 11, 27, 31, 34 and backcover), IITA (Page 4), Mari Tefre (Pages 17-18) and Strange Ones (Page 1). ii 1. mandate The Global Crop Diversity Trust (Crop Trust) began its independent operations in 2004, with a focused mission of what urgent needs it must endeavor to meet. Its first decade proved to be rich with international will and opportunities for action. The Crop Trust has evolved from a start-up entity to an established international organization with a central role in promoting and sustaining a global system of ex situ crop conservation. As it fills this role, the Crop Trust needs to For all that has changed, much has not. In continue to adapt to an evolving institutional adapting, the Crop Trust remains true to its DNA: setting –and related needs – in the conservation the mission and goals laid out in its Constitution. and use of plant genetic resources to best achieve These support its vision to secure forever the basis its mission. This document is intended to apply the of a diverse and sustainable agriculture to support lessons of the last ten years to planning for the next food security and alleviate poverty. ten. It also lays the foundation for a ten-year cycle of re-evaluation. -1- specific goals of the Crop Trust Promote an efficient, goal-oriented, economically efficient and sustainable global system of ex situ conservation, in accordance with the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2001) and the Global Plan of Action for the Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (1996); Safeguard collections of unique and valuable plant genetic resources for food and agriculture held ex situ, with priority being given to those that are plant genetic resources included in Annex 1 to the International Treaty or included in Article 15 of the International Treaty; Promote the regeneration, characterization, documentation and evaluation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture and the exchange of related information; Promote the availability of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture; and Promote national and regional capacity building, including the training of key personnel, with respect to the above. -2- What is at stake By 2024, the end of the ten-year period covered by this strategic work plan, the world’s population is expected to reach 8 billion – almost one billion more people than in 2014. By 2050 it may pass 9 billion. During this period, the world’s climate will continue to change, bringing unprecedented challenges to farmers. Nobody can predict with precision the problems that will most impact global food production, though there is no shortage of candidates: rising temperatures, drought, floods, extreme weather, pests, diseases, or the mass failure of widely adopted monocultures. What we do know is this Conserving the vast diversity within and between crops is the only way to guarantee that farmers and plant breeders will have the raw materials needed to adapt to whatever the future brings. This will require more work beyond the global system of ex situ conservation – continuing advances in breeding and crop science, solutions to difficult resource problems, efficient markets and access to them, an end to waste of food, not to mention a lot of hard work by farmers – but none of this can happen if the genetic base of our food supply is lost. -3- Food security Biodiversity The fight to achieve food security and end Nature’s original diversity is a treasure hunger is one of the greatest challenges facing worth protecting in itself, and crop diversity the world in the coming decades. Rising safeguards it. Ex situ collections of the populations, diminishing resources and incredible diversity found within cultivated deteriorating environments only raise the species and their relatives keep this heritage stakes. A greater diversity of genetic resources in alive, allowing it to return to the field if it is genebanks, available to all through an efficient otherwise lost. Crucially, this must include global ex situ conservation system, helps to locally important crops even if they do not ensure a secure food supply at more stable register as global priorities. This diversity, in prices. It provides the raw genetic material to turn, can reduce pressure on natural ecosystems, breed for a more nutritious and varied food and the essential services they provide, by supply, increasing poor populations’ access keeping existing farmland productive and to more affordable and healthier food to fight resilient. malnutrition. Coping with Sustainable climate change development A climate resilient agriculture is an adaptable Livelihoods in poor rural areas are rooted in a agriculture, and it is a basic tenet of genetics secure base of crop diversity. Conserving and that adaptation requires diversity. Plants from sharing this diversity has economic benefits anywhere in the world may hold the answers that are concentrated in these rural areas to climate challenges – including the wild and in low-income countries that depend on and weedy relatives of crops, which often agriculture for their economic growth. The survive under much more extreme conditions use of a greater diversity of available crops is than their domesticated cousins. We will a strategy that farmers can apply to develop need the full array of this diversity, collected, their own agricultural systems with minimal characterized and made available within a environmental impacts. The global system of ex global system, if we hope to adapt to conditions situ conservation represents a key component we have never seen before. At the same time, of the race to protect these resources and make crop diversity also encompasses varieties that them available to farmers in all countries. flourish and yield with lower inputs. This often means less fossil fuels burned: less carbon released into the atmosphere to produce food, and in some cases, more carbon sequestered in the field. Whether mitigating the causes of climate change or preparing for its impacts, the world’s crop diversity represents a heritage of human ingenuity that has the potential to help counter the man-made threat of our age. -4- 2. Legal Basis The Crop Trust operates as an essential element of the funding strategy of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, as established in a formal Relationship Agreement signed by the Crop Trust and the Governing Body of the Treaty in 2006. The Crop Trust’s work directly supports the system of ex situ conservation described in the Treaty; it is comple- mentary to ongoing in situ conservation efforts, which are however outside of the Crop Trust’s mandate as defined in its Constitution. The Governing Body of the Treaty nominates four members to the Executive Board of the Crop Trust, and the Board presents an annual report on Crop Trust activities to the Governing Body of the International Treaty. To further strengthen the relation- ship, the Secretary of the Treaty is also an observer to the Board. -5- The Executive Board is the principal decision-making body of the Crop Trust. The Board normally meets twice each year. It currently comprises eleven members who are appointed by key Trust stakeholders: members appointed by the Governing Body of the International Treaty members appointed by the Donors’ Council of the Crop Trust non-voting member appointed by the Director General of FAO non-voting member appointed by the Chair of CGIAR the Executive Secretary of the Trust, ex officio. The Donors’ Council of the Crop Trustwas established in 2005 and consists of public and private donors who have made a sizable contribution to the Crop Trust. The Donors’ Council functions as a forum for the Crop Trust’s donors to express their views on the organization’s activities and operations – an innovative mechanism to bring government donors, foundations and private companies together in a genuine public-private partnership with shared interest in the Crop Trust. Upon signing a Headquarters Agreement with the government of Germany in June 2012, the Crop Trust attained legal status as an independent entity based in that country. It has established its headquarters in the city of Bonn in January 2013, and looks forward to deepening ties with its German hosts during the next ten years. -6- 3. historical context There has never been controversy over the importance of crop diversity. The Crop Trust’s work responds to multiple calls for action from the international community over the last three decades, beginning with the 1983 Conference of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and its adoption of the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources. In 1992 this issue entered the global agenda in a big way with the Convention on Biological Diversity, ratified by 192 countries. -7- , the international agricultural Rounding out the roster, the International research centers of the Consultative Group on Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Agriculture was agreed to in 2001 by the FAO signed an agreement with FAO to the effect that Conference, comprising its entire membership, their crop collections were being held in trust and came into force in 2004. Some 128 countries on behalf of the world community, establishing are now contracting parties to the Treaty. As the largest public domain collections of crop such they commit to “cooperate to promote the diversity ever assembled. However, the vagaries of development of an efficient and sustainable system funding limited the ability of the CGIAR Centres of ex situ conservation” and require that all to meet in full and consistently the demands of parties cooperate to promote the conservation, this perpetual obligation.