abstract30.qxd 7/06/05 11:20 Page 1
Le journal de l'IRD
n° 30 May-July 2005
Translator: Nicholas Flay
© Alain Bonnamy
Abstracts for the international issue
T
S
he global-scale gulf in agriculture
is manifest at many levels : between countries of the South and
industrialized ones of the Northern
Hemisphere, between emerging and
less advanced countries, between the
large industrial and commercial agriculture and food firms and small family
concerns. CIRAD researchers, in discussions held at the Dakar Agriculture
Forum in February 2005, tackled the
question of what kind of prospects
« modernization » offers for helping to
reduce this gap. They concluded that
the only way of reforming agricultural
policy today is to implement a full set
of essential measures and that debate
must develop on what is called the
« modernization » of the private farming sector. The private sector itself,
through its organizations, will have to
take up this issue. The question will
undoubtedly involve solving divisions
between the large-scale concerns and
small-scale producers, who often do
not associate themselves with the idea
of the private sector. North-South
research will moreover have to be more
proactive in response to public policy
innovation, in particular by means of
sustained supportive partnership
schemes, extended to less advanced
countries.
heila Furquim, a PhD student of the
University of Sao Paulo being hosted
by Riverside University (California), has
been awarded the « Joe B. and Martha
J. Dixon » Prize for soil mineralogy, on the
occasion of the annual conference of the
American Society for Soil Science. Her doctorate concerns the interactions between
solid phases and dissolved material flows in
the various kinds of soil cover existing
around the alkaline lakes in the Pantanal
area. The special feature of this region is
the thousands of fresh water and salt water
lakes, which coexist spatially in the same climatic environment (rainfall, evaporation
and so on). Combination of different
approaches -structural, mineralogical and
geochemical- brought out the fact that the
geochemistry of salt water lakes results
from ongoing processes and not as a heritage of past situations as had hitherto been
supposed. This result is fundamental for the
management of the lakes which from now
on must be considered as elements of the
landscape in a precarious balance with the
environmental conditions.
p. 4 Partners
A Franco-British strategy
I
n September 2002, the Franco-British Alliance for Tropical Medicine was launched
under the impulse of the French Embassy in London. It groups together the IRD, Inserm,
the CNRS, the Pasteur Institute and two British research institutes, the Wellcome Trust and
the Medical Research Council (MRC). The objective of this alliance : encourage joint efforts
between researchers from industrial countries of the North and research institutes in the
developing countries.
p. 8-9 Research
A shared heritage
T
he architectural heritage of the late
XIXth and early XXth century in Middle
Eastern cities is under threat. It began to
arouse the interest of local authorities
relatively recently. In Cairo and Alep, the
research programme Hercomanes (HERitage COnservation MANagement Egypt &
Syria) was launched in 2000, and is focusing on two key questions: why these
sites should be preserved; and how they
can be protected. The emerging interest
in this heritage stems from a two-fold
observation : the under-representation of
such sites and objects of the period in
question on the Human Heritage list; the
manifold risks that affect them (degradation, inappropriate alteration or simply
demolition). Two sites in the city centres
of Cairo and Alep have been chosen as
examples for applying the programme.
These central districts hold most of the
architectural heritage in question. All
have considerable value. The research
has been conducted in three phases :
establishment of the sites’ state of pres-
p. 11 Valorisation
p. 4 Partners
Antivenom serum
A look at the fringes of capitalism
M
aristella Svampa, an Argentinian sociologist, is studying the various aspects of the
crisis which these past few years has been destabilizing the social fabric of
Argentina. A woman of character and conviction, for Sciences au Sud she gives a review
of her experiences and on the partnership she is currently running with the IRD research
unit Labour and globalization on the subject : work, social vulnerability and exclusion.
This partnership gives teams the opportunity to compare and contrast the work conducted on this subject in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
p. 5 Partners
400 researchers on the alert
© IRD/J. Laure
T
he five-year long Eden programme
(Emerging diseases in a changing
European Environment), which began at
the end of 2004, aims to gain an understanding of and quantify the impact of
environmental changes on the risks of the
emergence or re-emergence of human
diseases in Europe. It involves jointly CIRAD,
the Pasteur Institute and four IRD units
and over 400 researchers. Six major types
of disease are at the core of the project.
These are: tick-borne, such as Lyme’s
disease and Congo-Crimea fever, rodent
transmitted ones; the leishmanioses West
Nile virus; malaria and Rift Valley viruses.
Eden should provide information on
which to base a disease watch system, for
the Northern Hemisphere as much as for
the countries of the South. The models
obtained thanks to the programme,
although geared towards the industrialized countries of the North, will also be
useful for countries of the South.
p. 2 News
From wildlife
to domestic dogs
R
ecent studies conducted by IRD
researchers suggest that domestic
dogs can play a role in the spread of Ebola
virus. When the latest epidemics flared up
in Gabon and the Republic of Congo,
scientists found evidence that the percentage of dogs carrying Ebola antibodies but
with no clinical signs of the disease grows
linearly, and significantly, the closer they
are to the epidemic foci. These animals
could therefore be a potential source of
infection for humans. They could moreover be useful indicators of the presence
of the virus in the regions where there is
no other detectable external sign of the
disease.
p. 7 Research
Focus on the coastal
environment
T
he ROMS (Regional Oceanic Modeling
System) has the task of accurate
modelling of the events that occur in a
given coastal region, at different scales
while taking account of global climatic
variations. The principle of this modelling system consists in solving the equations linking currents, temperature and
salinity, aiming to arrive at an accurate
simulation of what happens in a particular delimited section of the ocean. It is
used in this way to identify the role of
currents, local winds, storms or even the
shape and form of the coastline and sea
floor. These are all factors that influence
the distribution of nutrients, transport of
plankton, the survival and location of
fish larvae. It also helps in efforts to
determine the local or regional impact of
large-scale climate variations, like ENSO
(El Niño Southern Oscillation) in the
Pacific Ocean or global warming. The
main area of application of the ROMS system is the discerning of changes in marine resources, but it can also be used
towards understanding and prediction of
extreme atmospheric and geological
events, monitoring of pollutants, sediment transport or in studies of biogeochemical processes and ocean-atmosphere exchanges. At the IRD, this model
has been adapted in line with the means
and technological context of the countries of the South, which do not have
supercalculators.
I
n Sub-Saharan Africa, over one million
snake bites occur each year. These result
in 20 000 deaths and the same number of
amputations. Antivenom serum is the only
etiological treatment. But it has to be available, in often remote health clinics, and at
affordable prices. In order to optimise
anti-venom serum production and accessibility in Africa, the IRD has combined
efforts with the Instituto Bioclon, a
Mexican serum manufacturer. They are
adopting a three-phase strategy: production of sera against the main African spe-
p. 13 IRD world
Eyes on the Amazon
Basin
T
he SEAS Guyane programme, which consists
of the installation and operation of a tracking station (X
band) permitting practically
real-time access to SPOT and
ENVISAT satellite data, has just been
launched. This high-resolution remotesensing platform, unique in Europe and
South America, will thus be a tool for
environmental surveillance. It should ease
access to the satellite data for local and
ervation ; development of an integrated
approach for identification and analysis
of sites and objects taking into account
such criteria as morphology, urban history and architectural typology ; drawingup of suitable urban heritage management systems with proposed procedures
for selection and rational classification,
along with a new institutional and legal
framework.
This programme has reinforced EuropeanMediterranean cooperation. It has the
benefit of partnerships between researchers from both the northern and southern
rim of the Mediterranean. Training
actions have been part and parcel of the
programme : postgraduate students have
been initiated in field research methods
and inter-university exchanges between
North and South have been encouraged,
involving the hosting of participants from
Europe. A conference was held on the
subject in March 2005 in Alexandria. The
event helped to widen the programme’s
scope to the whole southern rim of the
Mediterranean basin. It should result in
the setting-up of a Mediterranean region
network for the defence of architectural
heritage.
cies of venomous snake; present a formulation which is effective, does not cause
problems of tolerance, stable and inexpensive ; ensure its distribution to reduce
snake-venom induced deaths by 90 %
over 10 years. The first stage is almost
achieved and the second is progressing
well. The
researchers
hope that in
the end the
anti-venom serum
will be made
available at a
cost 2 to 3 times
lower than current products.
regional scientific projects. The Amazon region
to date has not enough
basic data or updated
objective references. This
programme is moreover
going to contribute to a
growth in research and
training activities, around
French Guiana’s university
complex. It will also
encourage operational services directly
involved in development in the region.
The IRD service unit Espace, which already
has recognised experience in this field,
has been actively involved in this programme.
p. 16 Forum
For a new epistemiology
for biology
T
he acceleration of advances in
biological and medical sciences,
buoyed up by the explosion in technology, means that it is urgent to formulate a
new epistemology for biology, an ethical
framework adapted to our era. For that
to develop, a forum for dialogue and
debate is necessary. This would bring the
fields of science, religion, psychology, history, philosophy and politics into the picture. With this in mind, Michel Tibayrenc
has taken the initiative of setting up a
working group « Biology, Medicine and
Society », open to specialists, but also to
university and senior school student and
any member of the general public interested by the subject.
Consult the articles in full on the IRD Internet site : http://www.ird.fr
© IRD/ Y. Gillon
A surprising mixed
salt water-fresh water ecosystem
© IRD/US Espace
Reducing the gulf
in agriculture
© Arnaldo Sakamoto-UFMS
p. 2 News
p. 1 y 16 Forum