Enhancing Food Sovereignty and Food Security through the Revitalization of Indigenous Knowledge: Experiences from the Bolivian Andes

Endogenous development is defined as development that values primarily locally available resources and the way people organized themselves for that purpose. It is a dynamic and evolving concept that also embraces innovations and complementation from other than endogenous sources of knowledge; however, only as far as they are based on mutual respect and the recognition of cultural and socioeconomic self-determination of each of the parties involved. Experiences that have been systematized in the context of the BioAndes Program are demonstrating that enhancing food security and food sovereignty on the basis of endogenous development can be best achieved by applying a ‘biocultural’ perspective: This means to promote and support actions that are simultaneously valuing biological (fauna, flora, soils, or agrobiodiversity) and sociocultural resources (forms of social organization, local knowledge and skills, norms, and the related worldviews). In Bolivia, that is one of the Latin-American countries with the highest levels of poverty (79% of the rural population) and undernourishment (22% of the total population), the Program BioAndes promotes food sovereignty and food security by revitalizing the knowledge of Andean indigenous people and strengthening their livelihood strategies. This starts by recognizing that Andean people have developed complex strategies to constantly adapt to highly diverse and changing socioenvironmental conditions. These strategies are characterized by organizing the communities, land use and livelihoods along a vertical gradient of the available eco-climatic zones; the resulting agricultural systems are evolving around the own sociocultural values of reciprocity and mutual cooperation, giving thus access to an extensive variety of food, fiber and energy sources. As the influences of markets, competition or individualization are increasingly affecting the life in the communities, people became aware of the need to find a new balance between endogenous and exogenous forms of knowledge. In this context, BioAndes starts by recognizing the wealth and potentials of local practices and aims to integrate its actions into the ongoing endogenous processes of innovation and adaptation. In order to avoid external impositions and biases, the program intervenes on the basis of a dialogue between exogenous, mainly scientific, and indigenous forms of knowledge. The paper presents an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of enhancing endogenous development through a dialogue between scientific and indigenous knowledge by specifically focusing on its effects on food sovereignty and food security in three ‘biocultural’ rural areas of the Bolivian highlands. The paper shows how the dialogue between different forms of knowledge evolved alongside the following project activities: 1) recuperation and renovation of local seeds and crop varieties (potato – Solanum spp., quinoa – Chenopodium quinoa, cañahua – Chenopodium pallidicaule); 2) support for the elaboration of community-based norms and regulations for governing access and distribution of non-timber forest products, such as medicinal, fodder, and construction plants; 3) revitalization of ethnoveterinary knowledge for sheep and llama breeding; 4) improvement of local knowledge about the transformation of food products (sheep-cheese, lacayote – Cucurbita sp. - jam, dried llama meat, fours of cañahua and other Andean crops). The implementation of these activities fostered the community-based livelihoods of indigenous people by complementing them with carefully and jointly designed innovations based on internal and external sources of knowledge and resources. Through this process, the epistemological and ontological basis that underlies local practices was made visible. On this basis, local and external actors started to jointly define a renewed concept of food security and food sovereignty that, while oriented in the notions of well being according to a collectively re-crafted world view, was incorporating external contributions as well. Enabling and hindering factors, actors and conditions of these processes are discussed in the paper.

The open cut: Mining, transnational corporations and local populations

The rapid expansion of the mineral and metal mining sector in the past decade was accompanied by an increase in social conflicts. What are the impacts of large-scale mining operations? What are the strategies used by transnational corporations to gain access to underground resources and legitimize their activities? And how do local and indigenous communities confronted with mining react to, negotiate with and resist these activities? This book covers 13 case studies of copper, gold, uranium and other mining operations, situated in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Switzerland. With an extensive introduction to the subject and a systematic comparison across mining operations in different phases of development and social contexts, it serves as a primer and reference book for activists, students and researchers alike.

Discourses, argumentative and devotional, on the subject of the Jewish religion : delivered at the synagogue Mikveh Israel

by Isaac Leeser

Spc98p Directs the Yeast γ-Tubulin Complex into the Nucleus and Is Subject to Cell Cycle-dependent Phosphorylation on the Nuclear Side of the Spindle Pole Body

In the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, microtubules are organized by the spindle pole body (SPB), which is embedded in the nuclear envelope. Microtubule organization requires the γ-tubulin complex containing the γ-tubulin Tub4p, Spc98p, and Spc97p. The Tub4p complex is associated with cytoplasmic and nuclear substructures of the SPB, which organize the cytoplasmic and nuclear microtubules. Here we present evidence that the Tub4p complex assembles in the cytoplasm and then either binds to the cytoplasmic side of the SPB or is imported into the nucleus followed by binding to the nuclear side of the SPB. Nuclear import of the Tub4p complex is mediated by the essential nuclear localization sequence of Spc98p. Our studies also indicate that Spc98p in the Tub4p complex is phosphorylated at the nuclear, but not at the cytoplasmic, side of the SPB. This phosphorylation is cell cycle dependent and occurs after SPB duplication and nucleation of microtubules by the new SPB and therefore may have a role in mitotic spindle function. In addition, activation of the mitotic checkpoint stimulates Spc98p phosphorylation. The kinase Mps1p, which functions in SPB duplication and mitotic checkpoint control, seems to be involved in Spc98p phosphorylation. Our results also suggest that the nuclear and cytoplasmic Tub4p complexes are regulated differently.