Consider, for example, the enormous monocultures of oil palm in lowland Sumatra. Their creation has been at the cost of removing almost all of the lowland forest of that island and its associated biodiversity. There has also been some interesting cross-fertilisation between different policy areas. Jervis Good took up the issue of socioeconomic aspects of biodiversity that had been discussed in the Fisheries Forum and presented it in the Agriculture Forum. To a arge degree his remarks anticipate those of some of our future invited contributors - we had already planned to consider the socioeconomic aspects of biodiversity.
Several issues raised in the first week continue to be discussed.
For example, Chris Stanley's comments in the first week on geodiversity have led to an interesting discussion on soil diversity, or 'pedodiversity'. Nicolae Florea made an interesting appeal for the study on the relationship between biodiversity and pedodiversity and called for the establishment of soil reserves. In addition, Stephen Hall's contribution in the first week led to an argument for basic genetic research from Valerii Glazko. The week ended with a very thoughtful piece by Pietro Perrino. He reminds us of the main goal of the conference, picked up the threads of several discussions within the conference and added some new points.