Rome, Italy
April, 2005
The
executive body of the
Global Crop Diversity Trust - the Interim Panel of Eminent
Experts - announced today the appointment of Dr Cary Fowler as
the Trust’s Executive Director. Dr Fowler replaces Dr Geoffrey
Hawtin who has led the initiative to establish the Trust since
2000.
“I am delighted to welcome Cary Fowler to the leadership of the
Trust,” said Ambassador Fernando Gerbasi, Chair of the Interim
Panel. ‘His knowledge and experience of both genetic resources
policy and institutions make him a superb choice for the
position. He has a clear and ambitious vision for the future of
the Trust that we find very exciting.”
Cary Fowler is an American national who has devoted the last 30
years of his career to the conservation and use of crop
diversity. He was formerly Program Director for the Rural
Advancement Fund, a US-based NGO engaged in plant genetic
resources education and advocacy. Dr Fowler led the secretariat
of the International Conference and Programme on Plant Genetic
Resources at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO), which resulted in FAO’s first ever global
assessment of the state of the world’s plant genetic resources
and the adoption of the Global Plan of Action for crop diversity
conservation and use by 150 countries at an international
conference at Leipzig in 1996.
Dr Fowler comes to the Trust from Norway where he is a Professor
and Director of Research in the Department for International
Environment & Development Studies at the Norwegian University of
Life Sciences. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Director
General of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute.
In this latter role, he represented the Future Harvest Centres
of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
in negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic
Resources. The Future Harvest Centres hold the most important
international collections of crop diversity in trust for the
world community. Dr. Fowler is the author of several books on
the subject of plant genetic resources and more than 75 articles
on the topic in agriculture, law, development and social science
journals.
The Global Crop Diversity Trust aims to match the long term
nature of conservation needs with long term secure and
sustainable funding. At its centre will be an endowment that
will provide a permanent source of funding for crop diversity
collections around the world. The Trust will help salvage the
world’s most important crop collections and guarantee their
ongoing healthy and safe conservation. A further goal of the
Trust is to assist the development of a rational and efficient
global system of crop diversity conservation. To achieve these
goals, the Trust seeks to raise an endowment of $260 million and
additional funds to provide upgrading and capacity building to
particularly needy genebanks.
The campaign to establish the Trust has involved an historic
partnership of the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) and the 15 Future Harvest Centres. It is an
unprecedented response to global development priorities,
addressing two of the Millennium Development Goals (Goal 1—to
eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and Goal 7—to ensure
environmental sustainability). The Trust also directly addresses
the priority of the G8 Action Plan on Science and Development to
support efforts to ensure funding for crop diversity
conservation.
“The work of the Trust is immensely important,” said Dr Fowler.
“Its goals are ambitious - to ensure the efficient and effective
conservation of the world’s most important collections of crop
diversity through the instrument of a $260 million endowment.
The Trust has made a wonderful start, in large part due to the
inspirational and tireless leadership of Geoff Hawtin. I am
thrilled and honoured to have been appointed to succeed him as
Executive Director of the Trust. With continued strong support
from our donors and friends all over the world, I am certain
that the Trust will make a major contribution to feeding the
hungry, now and far into the future. “
Cary Fowler will take over the position of Executive Director on
1 August 2005. |