The origin, method and purpose of PLEC

PLEC is about small farmers and biodiversity. Until a few years ago, all agriculture was believed to be the enemy of biodiversity. Nowadays it is realized that some areas managed by small farmers contain almost as much biodiversity as the wild. This diversity, which consists largely of species useful to people, is now often seen as the most valuable part of all biodiversity (Wood and Lenné 2000). Even in regard to the wild itself, ecological thinking has swung away from the old view that the richest biodiversity occurs in ecosystems that have had a long period of undisturbed evolution leading toward a ‘climax’ state. Since the late 1970s it has been forcefully argued that disturbances may be essential to the creation and maintenance of plant and animal diversity.