ABSTRACT
Ex situ and in situ conservation are distinguished as separate conservation strategies by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In situ conservation is defined as
the conservation of ecosystems and natural habitats and the maintenance and recovery of viable populations of species in their natural surroundings and, in the case of domesticated and cultivated species, in the surroundings where they have developed their distinctive properties.
(CBD, 1992, p. 4) When applied in the field of plant genetic resources (PGR), in situ conservation is translated into practices that address conservation in the context of the livelihoods of small-scale, and often poor, farmers (Jarvis et al., 2011). Since the early 1990s, organizations with widely dissimilar backgrounds have been associating their conservation actions with small-scale, poor farmers for whom the maintenance and use of local varieties was, and continues to be, an option to meet their livelihood needs (Keleman et al., 2009). They have thus entered into the field of, and the debate on the linkage between, biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction, more specifically the area of (agro-) biodiversity conservation and livelihood development (Fisher et al., 2008).