Title Conference

“New practices, alliances and policies for the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources in the Americas and the Caribbean”

Ronnie Vernooy, MS and PhD in rural development sociology, is a scientist with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. His work focuses on the development of resilient seed systems, including regulatory and legal aspects of the safeguarding and sustainable use of plant genetic resources, both ex situ as on sitefrom the local to the international level. A topic of particular interest is community seed banks and their roles in providing a voice and options for farmers to hold local crop diversity and associated knowledge in their own hands. He has worked on issues related to the conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity for more than 30 years in countries around the world. From 1992 to 2010, he was a program officer specializing in community-based natural resource management at the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada. From 2005 to 2010, he was an adjunct professor at the College of Humanities and Development at China Agricultural University in Beijing, teaching community-based natural resource management. Before joining Alianza, from October 2010 to September 2011, she lived and worked in Mongolia developing community strategies for climate change adaptation and disaster risk management.