What is Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS)

In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations launched an initiative called GIAHS. It aims to recognize, conserve and manage best agricultural biodiversity knowledge systems, food and livelihood security and cultures throughout the world. The project aims to identify around 100 to 150 agricultural heritage systems in the world that would be protected and managed for their traditional knowledge. The initiative promotes following:

Allows farmers to nurture and adapt the systems and biodiversity they have developed while ensuring food security and human well-being

It supports protective government policies and incentives while working for in situ conservation of biodiversity and traditional knowledge

Recognises the right to food and the cultural diversity and achievements of local communities and indigenous people

Crystallizes the needs for approaches that integrate the in situ conservation of genetic resources with related traditional knowledge and local institutions for natural resource management, as a way to ensure continuous co-adaptation to a changing physical and socio-economic environment, by strengthening the social-environmental resilience and co-evolutionary balance of agricultural systems