News | 12 April.- Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and forest and farm producer organizations representing the world’s smallholder farmers gathered today in Gurung (Tamu) Indigenous lands and Territories, Gandaki Province, Pokhara, Nepal to explore how to best manage the world’s agrobiodiversity, in the context of the International Conference on Agrobiodiversity.
The International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB) and delegates from around the world started dialogues towards cooperation between producer organizations and governmental institutions, the private sector, finance institutions and other stakeholders to promote agrobiodiversity within forest and farm value chains.
The event, which took place from 9 to 12 April, was organized by the Forest and Farm Facility, a partnership between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Institute for Environment and Development, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and AgriCord.
“Agrobiodiversity is key for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities maintain the most important genetic diversity for food. It is our priority to transmit this traditional knowledge, improve it and conserve it”, said Viviana Figueroa, Senior Technical Lead of the IIFB, during an opening speech on behalf of the IIFB.
Small farmers and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities are facing agrobiodiversity- preservation challenges, that arise from different sources.
“We have many challenges ahead, such as impacts of emerging technologies (Digital Sequence Information/LMO, EGD) and monopoly, corporatism, industrial farming, mechanization, chemical pollution, genetic erosion, misappropriation, assimilation, relocations, displacement. Rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities over lands, territories, waters, seeds, and knowledge systems need to be addressed”, indicated Kamal Kumar Rai (Kirant Indigenous Kamal Samagung, in Nepal), on behalf of the IIFB.
“As other Indigenous Peoples, we feel that all this traditional food production is at risk because related traditional knowledge is being lost. It is not being transmitted to younger generations. Young people are leaving our communities. We also are having problems with water. The production of food shouldn’t be addressed in isolation. It should be approached in a holistic and integrated manner, taking into account the connections of soil, waters and ecosystems. This has been the way we Indigenous Peoples have been preserving biodiversity, not for the benefit of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities only, but for all humanity”, indicated Viviana Figeroa, member of the Omaguaca Indigenous Peoples, in Argentina.
The conference aimed to address these challenges, including knowledge exchange on best practices in policy, knowledge management, seed conservation, agronomy, enterprise development and finance. Also, the conference was intended to move forward action to:
- Expand the co-production of knowledge on agrobiodiversity management.
- Promote the diversification of seed sources that sustain options for agrobiodiversity.
- Pilot and upscale innovative business and financial models that incentivize agrobiodiversity conservation.
In this context, the IIFB presented a proposal to establish a global, regional and national mechanisms involving Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, Farm and Forest Facility, and FAO to provide advice on agrobiodiversity and agroecology. “We would like the indigenous agro-biodiversity, indigenous food and agricultural and indigenous agroforestry systems in landscape to be respected and harmonized with Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and NBSAPs”, said Kamal Kumar Rai.