Tackling poverty and malnutrition in India
Published On Thu 30 Oct 2014 by Grant Hill
A guest lecturer at the University of Dundee’s Centre for Environmental Change and Human Resilience (CECHR) will next week discuss poverty and malnutrition in areas of India where an abundance of natural resources mean they should not exist.
John Pattison will be discussing ‘Alleviating Poverty and Malnutrition in Agrobiodiversity Hotspots in India’ at the Dalhousie Building, Old Hawkhill at 4pm on Thursday, 6th November.
The lecture takes its name from a collaboration between the University of Alberta in Canada and the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation in India that John is Project Manager of.
India is one of the world’s 17 mega-diversity countries and a major centre of crop domestication, yet despite prolonged economic growth and attention to policy there remains a contradiction between an abundant natural capital and the world’s highest rates of chronic malnutrition and poverty.
The Alleviating Poverty and Malnutrition (APM) Project is a research-for-development initiative with the guiding hypothesis that integrated agriculture which harnesses local agro-biodiversity can offer cost-effective, rapid, and sustainable solutions to the economic and food security challenges at a low environmental cost.
The Dundee talk will draw on his experiences as he discusses the challenges of managing a multi-million dollar international project and the successes and failures of the interventions. These stories and lessons from the field can provide perspective and guidance for policy makers, development professionals and researchers in the international development industry.
“We are delighted to be welcoming John Pattison to the University of Dundee and hearing him talk about his work in hotspots of agricultural biodiversity,” said CECHR Director John Rowan. “It seems something of a contradiction that communities in such areas should go hungry but our guest lecturer will be explaining why this situation occurs and proposed methods of tackling it.”
John Pattison has been engaged as a sessional lecturer in environmental and agricultural economics at the University of Alberta, established Pattison Resource Consulting Ltd, and sits on the Board of Directors for the Battle River Watershed Alliance as well as serving as Director of the Biodiversity and Research Grants Committee for the Alberta Conservation Association.
He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) at the University of Greenwich. His research on occupational and asset based poverty traps in marginalis ed communities within agrobiodiversity hotspots is a component of this larger research initiative, and complements his other research interests of food security, ecosystem services and international development and economics.
‘Alleviating Poverty and Malnutrition in Agrobiodiversity Hotspots in India’ takes place at the Dalhousie Building, Old Hawkhill at 4pm on Thursday, 6th November. More information about the event, including details of how to obtain tickets, is available at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cechr-guest-lecture-alleviating-poverty-and-malnutrition-in-agrobiodiversity-hotspots-in-india-tickets-13550169923.
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