SPL 579 (Graduate Seminar): Rethinking Environment-Agriculture Nexus: The Politics of Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation in Turkey

Boğaziçi University
Master of Arts in Social Policy 
SPL 579 (Graduate Seminar)

Zühre Aksoy
(Assistant Professor at Department of Political Science and International Relations, Bogazici University)
“Rethinking Environment-Agriculture Nexus: The Politics of Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation in Turkey”

April 14 (Thursday), 2016 
15.00-17.00
Social Policy Forum 
(Kuzey Campus, KPark Building Room 119)

Loss of biological diversity is a significant global environmental problem. As part of a broader conception of biodiversity, conservation of agricultural biodiversity is foundational for modern agriculture and global food supply. Through their cultivation of traditional varieties of crops and other accompanying practices, small farmers in centers of genetic origin and diversity, many of which are located in the developing countries of the South, are the major stewards of this global public good. These practices are importantly embedded within national and global agricultural governance and policy frameworks, and they are increasingly threatened by pressures stemming from global markets, which require a particular form of agricultural production that entails uniformity, ever more marginalizing peasants engaged in conserving agrobiodiversity. In this sense, agrobiodiversity stands at the very intersection of political economy of agriculture and environmental sustainability.

Turkey is located on two Vavilov centers of genetic origin and diversity. This paper will examine the relationship between increasing integration of rural livelihoods with market processes and the conservation of agricultural biodiversity by the farmers. The question the paper will address is: What is the impact of neoliberal transformation in agriculture on the conservation of agricultural biodiversity in Turkey? To understand the process of conservation, an evaluation of the conditions and socio-economic factors that are crucial in farmers’ practices who maintain genetic resources is of major significance. Based on the fieldwork conducted in Turkey, consisting of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with farmers who engage in practices that conserve genetic resources, the paper will examine these agricultural practices of the farmers within a framework of multi-scale linkages. The paper will further elaborate policy frameworks that will contribute to the continuation of conservation and management of agrobiodiversity by the farmers, with important implications for conservation strategies.

Zühre Aksoy is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. She holds a PhD from the Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 2004-2005, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the International Center for Advanced Studies (ICAS) of New York University. Her research interests include International Institutions, International Environmental Politics, Political Economy of Agriculture and Development and North-South Relations, with a focus on global environmental and agrarian justice; politics of biodiversity, agricultural biotechnology and biosafety; climate change; traditional knowledge and intellectual property rights. Publications include Global Justice: From Theory to Development Action, in Journal of International Development (with Theo Papaiannaou and Helen Yanacopulos, 2009); and Local-Global Linkages in Environmental Governance: The Case of Crop Genetic Resources, in Global Environmental Politics, 2014.