FAQ

1. What does GIAHS stand for and what are GIAHS?
2. When was GIAHS concept formulated?
3. What is the goal and objectives of the GIAHS Initiative?
4. What are the intervention strategies of the GIAHS Initiative?
5. What is dynamic conservation approach?
6. How is GIAHS initiative trying to achieve both its development and sustainability goals in the face of globalization and global climate change/variability?
7. What do we mean by five assets of rural systems?
8. What are the criteria for judging adaptive management and dynamic progress?
9. At the rural community level, what are the factors that are most frequently at the base of the sustainable management of land and natural resources?
10. Why intervene in situations where the people concerned are already practicing ingenious and sustainable land and natural resource management techniques?
11. What kinds of local partners will GIAHS work with?
12. What are good policies for dynamic conservation of GIAHS and sustainable agriculture and rural development?
13. What are the advantages of using traditional agricultural knowledge systems?
14. How are the GIAHS sites and candidate systems chosen?
15. Will GIAHS Initiative work on sites in industrialized countries?

To be sustainable, management of the land within community territory must be base on a wide social consensus on the ways to access natural resources (and land) and on how land will be allocated. It is the community and the community alone that must be responsible for decisions and indispensable collective actions to ensure the continuity of the management efforts made by individuals (farmers, herders, fishermen, hunters and gatherers, etc.). Individual practices for exploiting natural resources (equipment and management techniques) are part of a consistent and continuing collective system piloted by the community as a whole.

Furthermore, the community must be well aware that natural resources are fragile and that they can be exhausted and it must demonstrate its firm intention to ensure sustainable management and be a «good father» to the resources within its territory:

It is crucial that the community has a sense that it is:

• A community with a destiny: the men and women living in the community must feel responsible for the future of the natural resources within their territory;
•  A community with a clearly defined territory. The community feels involved in what goes on within its territorial limits. These limits must be recognized by neighbouring communities so as not to create conflict which is highly prejudicial to sustainable methods of natural resource use. This sense of responsibility could be termed as a sense of heritage.

The State cannot replace the local and traditional family farming communities’ determination to act.