Article on International Gardens and Climate Research Facility

atlanta a a ol ESE DORLING KINNSRSLEY; SOURCE FOR WATER FACT WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT JOURNAL | Frontlines SCIENCEBUSINESSNATURETECHNOLOGYCULTUREPOLITICS | EARTH'S SECRETS How might soil bacteria be affected by global warming? BIOLOGISTS DIG DEEPER Canada’s new Biotron superlab contains miniature chunks of the natural world that will help us predict the impact of climate change on living organisms | BY LINDSAY BORTHWICK GROUP OF PLANT SCIENTISTS GATHERED IN VIENNA IN 2005 AT THE International Botanical Congress. The meeting was pretty much what you would expect until its conclusion, when the congress declared: “As a matter of urgency, facilities for controlled, ecosystem-scale experiments are required now.” With- out a better toolbox to study how the natural world responds to global climate change, “sustained human habitability of Earth” would be at risk. Fortunately, just such a toolbox was already being designed by Norman Hiiner, a Canadian biochemist and plant biologist. Htiner had begun work on his Biotron Institute for Experimental Climate Change Research in 1999. In early 2008 it will open its doors, the first facility in the SUO}IDS OZE ‘PST “DUIYD UT “SUO]IDE OEP‘N9G “SaqIDIG payiUugQ ay) ul uotjdunsu0s tajoM DIIdDI 4ad oNUUy Peace 1n The Garden LAST FALLIN THE GERMAN city of Kassel, a group of about 15 women harvested a bumper crop of pumpkins, squash, and wine grapes frarn a small community gar- den. Nothing unusual there, perhaps—except that the women were from Moracco, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the former Yugosiavia. The “intercultural garden” in Kassel is one of about 100 in Germany, but the only one run entirely by women. [And after the gardeners had long discussions about the haz- ards of pesticides, its produce will be totatly erganic.] The gardens began in 1995, after a group of Bosnian women in Gottingen, waiting out the Balkan conflict, told social workers how much they missed the farnous plum and apple orchards of Bosnia’s Drina Valley. There has been adversity along the way. A garden in Berlin had to be placed under police protection after it was targeted by neo-Nazi protest- ers. In Cologne the gates of another garden have been destroyed three times. And it isn't always easy to coax tra- ditional craps such as Afghan mint, coriander, and Iranian leeks from the mineral-rich German soil. Yet the gardens thrive. Says Behoumi, a 31-year-old from Morocco, “Without the beauty of the garden | could not survive.” —ANGELA BOSKOVICH WINTER 2008 onearth 13 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019444