Case for Folk Valuation Of Plant Genetic Resources

This work brings together evidence from the historical, ethical and cross-cultural dimensions of Plant Genetic Resource (PGR) conservation to argue for an accounting of diverse folk value – i.e. value central to the cohesion and survival of particular peoples or nations – in the collection and safeguarding of the precise plants that humankind needs to survive well. I argue that, without the original commitment to the simultaneous defence of biological and cultural survival that gave rise to PGR conservation in the menacing Soviet Union, today’s stringently utilitarian valuation of PGR risks further eroding the traditional and Indigenous motivations and traditions that have stewarded PGR into the present and that continue to power plant conservation around the world. By accounting for the breathtaking variation in folk value for plants within collections, PGR maintenance and conservation can construct and safeguard more desirable and more important plant collections than those that currently exist, while bolstering the world’s persistent and diverse cultures of plant conservation. Such an approach is congruent with the deeper scientific truth for which Russian agronomist and botanist Nikolay Vavilov stood and for which he was martyred: that we shall not survive biologically without the cultural diversity that is the fountain head of humanity’s global plant endowment.