ASH News - 20/04/2005

Launch of New International Alliance

Today sees the launch of the new Alliance for Sustainable Horticulture (ASH) at www.sustainablehorticulture.org, with twin aims:

• helping make commercial horticulture more sustainable, and
• using horticulture to contribute to conservation and sustainable development.

A great deal of attention has been paid internationally in recent years to the sustainability of forestry and agriculture. Countless conferences have been organised, labelling schemes introduced, and codes of conduct adopted. By contrast the sustainability of horticulture has received little attention. Can horticulture learn from these other fields? What are the priorities? Discussion forums on the ASH website can now help to answer these and other questions, and everyone who is interested is encouraged to get involved.

To give just two examples, imported salad crops consume vast quantities of scarce fresh water, leaving behind a devastated environment, and the beauty of imported flowers often hides gross practices. In some places, f ifty to sixty percent of floriculture workers report symptoms of pesticide poisoning, including high rates of miscarriage.

On the other hand, horticulture can contribute directly to conservation – for instance threatened flowering bulbs like cyclamen and snowdrops are now grown by the Indigenous Propagation Project (IPP) in Turkey where once they were collected from the wild in their millions for export.

ASH is the brainchild of Mike Read, a consultant botanist and resource management specialist with 20 years experience around the world, and the originator of the original IPP. But ASH is designed to be ‘open-to-all’ and all information produced or presented by ASH will be copyright-free. As Mike Read says: "the problems are too acute and the time too short to be precious about ownership of information. This is intended to be an Alliance of individuals and organisations that come together in a spirit of friendship and open-mindedness to tackle problems. This is all about sustainability for horticulture, and horticulture for sustainability."

Mike Read

The new ASH website www.sustainablehorticulture.org is also today launching ‘Intensive Care for Critically Endangered Plants’ a new manual designed to show how horticulture can best help save the world’s most endangered plants.

ASH is seeking funding and sponsors to help achieve its aims. For more info check out www.sustainablehorticulture.org or call +44 (0)7905-795170.

See picture - Mike Read. In the past wild collection for snowdrops has reduced their numbers, now local horticulture in Turkey is coming to the rescue.