Le journal de l'IRD
n° 54 April-May 2010
Translator: Nicholas Flay
Abstracts for the international issue
A tiger at the crossroads
Considering the city of the future, especially in the countries of the South,
requires investigation now of the various trends at work in urban areas. The
surging development of the megapoles is raising enormous and highly varied
challenges. But research is shedding light on some of them…
T
The predator, an economic
agent like any other
A
p. 16 Forum
In the name of “biodiversity”…
Biodiversity” is a convenient portmanteau term. All
project their own representations of nature depending on their cultural background and life experience, but
also in relation to their expectations and immediate
interests. Not surprising then that “biodiversity” has
become so popular, as everyone gets something out of
it -according to what they put in!
DR
© IRD/J.-M. Boré
“
p. 13 Earth
On secularity in Africa
D
o debates on secularity contribute to the
building-up of “public religious spaces” in
Sub-Saharan Africa? Anthropologists, political scientists and historians have examined the question,
on the occasion of the grand symposium, organized by the Publislam project in the Malian capital
last January.
The senses alive
W
ho would have believed it? To choose a suitable egg laying site,
the females of a butterfly pest of maize and sorghum use two
types of sensory organs. An IRD entomologist has described the position
and the operation mechanism.
p. 2 News
shared analysis with a view to optimizing
the performances of agricultural
research. It involves a new pact of confidence to review our certainties with the
sole objective of excellence, in any circumstances and any place.
SAS: What do you expect from the
Grisp initiative?
P.S.: The Global Rice Scientific Partnership is an initiative aiming to mobilize
the national, regional and international
competences, on the systems based on
rice with a view to obtaining results
that give a strong impact. A true
decompartmentalization of international agricultural research is expected
from it. That means putting the whole
of the national agricultural research
systems (Nars), the advanced research
institutions of the Northern Hemisphere (Aris,) the international centres
of the Cgiar and diverse partners to do
research in another way and better. As
Grisp is a global partnership for rice culture research, it will allow bridges to be
built between the rice culture research
programme of other institutes having
an international mandate on rice outside the GCRAI such as the Jircas, Jica, IRD
and Cirad.
tayud
A. Cala
© IRD/P
The Indian Ocean’s role in El Niño onset
E
l Niño is one of the most formidable climatic phenomena, involving both the ocean
and the atmosphere. The centre of El Niño’s activity is mainly the Pacific Ocean, but
it causes disturbances around the whole world. Its mechanisms and climatic effects are
now well known, but a great challenge still has to be faced: find a way towards ever earlier forecasting of its arrival. Another part of its mystery has recently been unveiled, leading to better techniques for anticipating the event. IRD researchers and their partners have
just identified an essential element, still poorly known, of the onset of an El Niño episode,
several thousand kilometres to the East, in the neighbouring ocean: “the ‘Indian Ocean dipole’ is an anomaly of the water surface temperatures similar to El
Niño”, explains Jérôme Vialard, IRD researcher and coauthor of the study. “We have just shown that it modulates the Indo-Pacific atmospheric circulation.” It thus
sets conditions favourable for the enfant terrible to
arrive.
© IRD/L. Ortlieb
T
Sciences au Sud:
How would you
assess the
overall outcome
of the Global
Conference on
Agricultural
Research for
Development
(GCARD)?
Papa Seck: The GCARD brought together
researchers, users of the products of
research and a variety of partners for a
re the ecological balances between
species of the same ecosystem simply
the product of a mass ratio between prey and
predators? Nothing can be less sure, according
to a team of IRD researchers. The introduction
of an approach borrowed from economic theory enabled them to explain certain paradoxes
encountered in the marine ecosystems of the
upwelling zones.
p. 10 Research
Rethinking global
agricultural research
he great global rally for agricultural
research for development was held
in Montpellier towards the end of April.
No fewer than 1000 researchers, political
decision-makers, farmers and members
of civil society met on the occasion of this
first world conference (GCARD) under the
aegis of the Global Forum of Agricultural Research (GFAR). Three international
centres: Africa Rice, CIAT (International
Centre for Tropical Agriculture) and IRRI
(International Rice Research Institute),
launched a world partnership, the Global Rice Scientific Partnership (Grisp), built
around rice. The IRD and Cirad recently
became associated with this initiative.
The Director general of Africa Rice, Papa
Seck, talked to Sciences au Sud, setting
out the main lines of this partnership and
reiterates the major stakes involved in
agricultural research for development.
© IRD/J.-P. Montoroi
p. 3 News
© IRD/A. Bertrand
Competition for the fringes
“With the strong surges of the
megapoles of the South, and the
changes in their role in globalization, the urban peripheries are
becoming fiercely contested for
the construction of the city of
tomorrow”, explains geographer
Emile Le Bris, talking about the
work conducted in the context of
the Perisud programme in Shanghai, Mexico City, Lima, Cape
Town, Hanoi and Abidjan. The
passing of the idea of a sharp boundary between the rural and urban areas has led to
the vision of the urban fringes as dynamic areas with rather special characteristics, and
therefore much coveted. These zones offer a wide range of possibilities for innovation,
capable of answering new needs and new concepts of the city. But with globalization
and the associated influx of investments, many peripheral areas that are still green are
privatized and restricted to the use by the elites and middle classes, in a process of
urbanization and speculation. As this researcher points out, “Gated communities, these
private residential quarters in the North American style, have grown up around the
megapoles of Latin America and now of Africa. They essentially meet a demand for
security, and are proliferating in the cities with a reputation for violence.” These sections of society compete to occupy the city fringes against new generations coming
from rural migration movements, in quest of cheap areas, following the mode for social
competition. “Although everywhere there is legislation which tends to control such
trends, the weight of the different players is highly variable, as are their scales of decision-making and intervention”, he remarks in answer to that notion. Elsewhere, following another tendency altogether, competition for use of urban peripheries brings
economic players into opposition concerning the nature of their activities. For example,
in the Red River Delta in Vietnam, on the boundaries of the agglomeration of Hanoi,
the installation of clusters, in densely populated areas traditionally given over to agriculture, is a source of considerable conflict. These groupings of industrial companies,
whose outlet for exportation is channelled through the nearby capital, is impinging on
the village communities long established in the original farming occupations. “Finally,
the disproportionate size of these megapoles often comes with a deficit in governance,
which favours a dynamics away from the centre for political and administrative functions”, he observes. Competition thus often sets in between the peripheral territories
and the duly elected or appointed municipal authorities, particularly concerning taxes.
“We can even see some self-proclaimed zones emerging which are fiscally independent, notably in Mexico City”, the geographer affirms. These conflicts of jurisdiction,
which border on secession, are stoked up by the distance, particularly when the periphery is located outside the central administrative entity.
hailand, not long ago one of the world’s
economic growth champions, now finds
itself needing to revise its model of development. As economist Alain Mounier explains “Its
industry is no longer competitive against the
highly productive China.” With a Thai research
partner he recently published an extensive survey on the subject. “Stuck between the devil of
the high productivity of the Western countries
and the deep blue sea of the low salaries of the
Chinese giant, the Thai economy must evolve.”
p. 5 Partners
SAS: What have been the
greatest advances in research
over the past few years?
Peter Piot: The greatest advance
has been in prevention: the discovery of the protective role of
circumcision, by a French
researcher who worked in South
Africa. This practice reduced the
risk of infection in men by 50%.
Unfortunately, it does not protect
women from a contaminated
man at all even if he were circumcised.
Another
significant
advance concerns the scientific
progress made in improving
patient care. Research work has
shown that the follow-up of
treatment could be simplified, by
no longer basing it on the dosage
of CD4 lymphocytes. Finally, the
fundamental research on the origins of Aids is progressing, like
the original work by Martine
Peeters and Eric Delaporte in
Gabon and Cameroon demonstrates. Knowledge on the genetic and antigenic evolution of the
virus –understanding why some
hosts become ill and others are
not– opens up some concrete
ways towards treatment.
Cities of the South in the XXIth Century
© IRD/G. Holder
Peter Piot: There’s good news
and bad. The good news is that
fewer people are infected every
year, thanks to treatment and
prevention programmes. The bad
news: annually there are 2 million
people who die of the disease,
2.7 million contaminated and
over 35 million living with it. This
infection is still the primary cause
of mortality in Sub-Saharan
Africa, and the number of new
infections there is three times as
high as those under treatment:
the gap between the people who
need to be treated and those
who are offered these therapies
therefore continues to rise. In
most countries, the peak of the
epidemic has been passed, partly
thanks to the prevention programmes, but also for the fact
that the individuals at risk have
already been infected. However,
new fronts are occurring: in
China and in Eastern Asia, surges
of epidemics are being recorded
among homosexual men in practically all the large cities. The incidence of Aids is also very high
among drug users in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
So in spite of advances made, the
epidemic is not over…
p. 3 News
p. 11 Valorization
Fish under video-surveillance
A
© IRD/E. Folcher
Sciences au Sud: What is the
global situation of the Aids
epidemic?
p. 8 and 9 Research
© IRD/P. Chevalier
Extract from an
interview with Peter
Piot
© IRD/E. Mesclier
© Gates Foundation
p. 1 Interview
n autonomous fixed camera system has been developed to follow up the behaviour of coral-reef fish, without creating bias by a diver’s presence. The IRD, in association with the University of La Réunion, have just
obtained a patent for this system, called VidéoSolo.
Another submarine observation technology, but this
time a mobile one, has been developed at the IRD’s
Noumea centre by Ifremer. It was the subject of a
patent filed in co-ownership between the organizations and the New Caledonia Economic Development
Agency.
Consult the articles in full on the IRD Internet site: http://www.ird.fr
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