I write this piece from my recent experiences with young and early career researchers at my University of Makerere in Kampala. It is a graduate conference organized by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and among students are those from the School of Forestry, Environmental and Geographical Sciences, with over 20 graduate student’s presentations. I interact with a couple of students following up on questions asked during the morning session. One of the students I interacted with is working on biodiversity conservation and livelihoods in a distant rural place in western Uganda, a place I had visited earlier at the end of October during the school retreat on curriculum.

With all the discussions on curriculum fresh, our discussion with the student lead me to ask whether she thought of, or knew about biodiversity existing in cities like Kampala. The answer was surprising but also revealing. An emphatic no about the existence of biodiversity and that ‘we’ cannot think of talking about biodiversity in cities nor even conduct research simply because, according to the student, there is no biodiversity in cities. This was quite revealing in respect to how either the paucity of knowledge about biological resources or pedagogical approach may be flawed. It also points to how the material and knowledge about biodiversity is under-utilized or lacking the urban dimension.

My interpretation is that this reinforces a flip of the ‘urban bias’ a term that is conceptualized by Lipton as the systemic bias against agriculture and the rural economy in governments’ policies and allocation of developmental resources. The flip in context here is a bias towards urban development seen largely as built-up form and thus resources allocated to such areas and less if not nothing for natural resources within urban systems. However, the inadequacy of curricula in addressing urban natural resources is largely due to the dominance of terrestrial and aquatic ecological studies at university that recognize ecological landscapes mostly as rural phenomena—urban and built-up forms of ecological landscapes are often ignored or masked out in the analysis.

In the ‘Urban Biodiversity…’ essay, I raise a couple of points to illustrate the educational challenge around what knowledge is used and how pedagogical approaches have negated urban biodiversity but also how this can be integrated into the curriculum. You will find the full essay here.

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