Although in-situ conservation is increasingly considered an efficient way of conserving plant genetic resources, little is known about the incentives and constraints that govern conservation decisions among small farm holders in developing countries.

This paper uses a farm level panel data from Ethiopia and a comprehensive empirical strategy to investigate the contribution of crop biodiversity on food production.

We find that increasing the number of crop variety increases production. This result is stronger when rainfall level is lower. Moreover, the productivity analysis is complemented with the study of the determinants of farm level crop biodiversity. Empirical results suggest that rainfall, tenure security and household endowments tend to govern crop diversity decisions at the farm level.

Ecological adaptations allow dryland plants and animals to reproduce, grow and survive in extreme conditions. Simply dryland systems are ecologically resilient and cannot be dismissed as wastelands

Using a choice experiment approach, the authors investigated what governs Ethiopian farmers’ in-situ conservation decisions and crop-variety preferences.

This paper deals with bioprospecting defined as the purposeful search for natural compounds undertaken by pharmaceutical or biotechnology firms to find leads necessary for the development of new drugs.

While many factors might affect biodiversity conservation, the use of economic incentives is argued to be potentially one of the most effective mechanisms for mainstreaming biodiversityconservation in bioregions. Institutions are singled out as one important class of socio-economic arrangements directly associated with economic incentives.

The efficient governance of information-production is analysed in the context of the bio-technology industry. Here primary R&D generates pure abstract information on the nature of biological solution concepts, while secondary R&D generates commercial products marketable to consumers.

The value of genetic resources for R&D is placed within the framework of discussions concerning sustainability. We assess the extent to which society is able to invest now in order to prepare for future risks and uncertainties in the arrival of biological problems.

The study is an empirical investigation of agrobiodiversity conservation decisions of small farmers in the central highlands of Ethiopia.

Diversity is often associated with resilience but in this model, unobserved genetic or behavioral diversity can explain the collapse of supposedly regulated fish stocks such as cod. Recent studies have shown the existence of separate sub stocks of cod even at a very fine geographical scale.