Globally important agricultural heritage systems (GIAHS): a legacy for food and nutrition security.

Abstract In many countries specific agricultural systems and landscapes have been created, shaped and maintained by generations of farmers and herders based on diverse species and their interactions and using locally adapted, distinctive and often ingenious combinations of management practices and techniques. Globally important agricultural heritage systems (GIAHS) represent a unique sub-set of these agricultural systems, which exemplify customary use of globally significant agricultural biodiversity and merit to be recognized as a heritage of mankind. Agricultural heritage systems throughout the world testify to the inventiveness and ingenuity of farmers in their use and management of the finite resources, biodiversity and interspecies dynamics, and the physical attributes of the landscape, codified in traditional but evolving knowledge, practices and technologies. However, GIAHS are rapidly shrinking victims of globalization, urbanization and unsustainable technological and economic changes. In order to safeguard and support the world's agricultural heritage systems, the author conceptualized and presented on behalf of Food and Agriculture Organization a partnership initiative on 'Conservation and Adaptive Management of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems' that was adopted by the World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg South Africa. The initiative seeks to promote the international recognition, conservation and adaptive management of these systems, including support for local and indigenous communities in developing enabling environment and appropriate policies for dynamic conservation of GIAHS. The concept of GIAHS has already laid the foundation for the recognition of traditional food systems as food heritage and its contribution to sustainable diets. Recognizing traditional food systems as national or global heritage, not only gives utmost pride to the custodians of the traditional food systems (i.e. the small-scale family farmers, traditional food processors and distributors), but it would also encourage their collaboration and participation in programmes to improve efficiency and productivity within the food systems.