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A recent meeting in Lima, Peru, ended with a joint commitment by the Ministries of Agriculture and Environment to collaborate on the greater use of Peru's agricultural biodiversity to enhance its economic and social development. One of the first outcomes of the partnership will be a map of hotspots of agricultural biodiversity in Peru. The two Ministries will jointly prepare the map, which will be presented to a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010.

This marks a great step forward for Peru, which has great riches of agricultural biodiversity. The meeting: 'Using agricultural biodiversity to overcome poverty and improve livelihoods' is one of several contributions to the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity in 2010. It was convened by Bioversity International with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of the Environment and organized by Peru's Instituto Nacional de Innovación Agraria (INIA). Almost 200 people attended from more than 75 Peruvian organizations, representing many different sectors.

Marleni Ramirez, Bioversity's Regional Director for the Americas, said that bringing all the parties together was one of the key achievements of the meeting.

"Everyone agreed that the needs of Peru's people would be better served by collaborating to make better use of agricultural biodiversity," Ramirez said.

The final declaration acknowledges that Peru is one of the most diverse countries in the world, and that "its unique biodiversity should be taken into account in the development models adopted".

The declaration was signed by Adolfo de Córdova, Minister of Agriculture, Antonio Brack, Minister of the Environment, César Paredes, Director of INIA, and Marleni Ramirez.

Coming together like this to adopt the declaration sealed the four organizations' intent to mainstream Peruvian agricultural biodiversity in public policy proposals aimed at enhancing the economic and social development of Peru.

In addition to the map of Peru's agricultural biodiversity, another early effort will be a project to engage teachers and children in 50 schools in 15 provinces. Margarita Baena, a communications expert at Bioversity, will advise on a painting contest to promote the value of agricultural biodiversity and its contribution to society.

A collaborative discussion website for the meeting was established at Google Groups.

Further information is available from  Margarita Baena.

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