Abstract:

Over the centuries, generations of farmers, forest peoples and herders have developed complex, diverse natural resources and locally adapted agricultural and forestry management systems to create and maintain specific, remarkable landscapes and agricultural systems that provide livelihoods, food security, conservation of natural resources and biodiversity. Building on local knowledge and experience, these ingenious agricultural systems reflect the evolution of humankind, the diversity of knowledge and profound relationship with nature. However, these systems are rapidly shrinking, victims of modernization, technological and economic changes. To address this problem, and the global trends undermining family agriculture and traditional agricultural systems, in 2002, during the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD, Johannesburg, South Africa), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched a Global Partnership Initiative on conservation and adaptive management of ‘Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems’, known as The GIAHS Initiative. The overall objective of the partnership is to identify and safeguard Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems and their associated landscapes, agricultural biodiversity and knowledge systems by initiating and establishing a long-term programme to support such systems and enhance global, national and local benefits derived from their dynamic conservation, sustainable management and enhanced viability.