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Recent News » Reflections on 2008 and Looking Toward 2009

Dear Friends,

 

2008 was quite a year: the world experienced a food crisis, felt the effects of climate change and an economic downturn.  These contemporary challenges highlight the importance of ecoagriculture landscapes that provide nourishing food, meaningful livelihoods and habitats for wild biodiversity.

2008 was an important year for Ecoagriculture Partners too, when the work we and our partners have been doing began to bear fruit. Highlights included:

• Leadership. Courses in Uganda and Costa Rica trained 64 ecoagriculture leaders from 13 countries on the multi-stakeholder approach to conservation, agriculture and rural development. Participants are applying these new skills in many African and Central American landscapes.
• Communities. The Community Knowledge Service provided the forum for farmer and community organizations to share their ecoagriculture strategies, with field exchanges and events in India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Kenya, Uganda, Costa Rica, Panama, Puerto Rico Germany and Spain.
• Students. With university partners (Cornell and Berkeley), we began AgricultureBridge to link ecoag practitioners with university students hungry for meaningful research projects. Videos are being made to document 10 landscapes in China, Costa Rica, Honduras, Kenya, Uganda and the U.S.
• Landscapes. We launched our Landscape Measures Resource Center with tools to help practitioners plan, manage and quantify progress in ecoagriculture landscapes.
• Markets. Commodity producers and marketers promoting sustainable palm oil began to use our new monitoring system to track progress in becoming more ‘biodiversity-friendly’; sugar, soy and cocoa producers and traders will be adopting these tools in 2009 and beyond.
• Policy. With partners, we educated and energized delegates to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Bonn, Germany about the opportunities and promising policies to conserve biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.
  

There is still a lot more to do in 2009.  Your support has been vital to us and our partners, and we are deeply grateful. 

 

If you would like to consider a gift to a loved one, or donate directly to Ecoagriculture Partners by credit card or check, please visit our donate page. In the US and many other countries, your gift is 100% tax-deductible.

 

We look forward to working together in the coming year, and to ushering in a new era of ecoagriculture landscapes worldwide!

 

Warmest wishes for a happy and healthy holiday season,

 

Sincerely,

 

Ecoagriculture Partners

 

Posted By Sajal Sthapit at 6:35am on 22 December 2008

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