The overall project goal is to "protect and encourage customary use of biological resources in accordance with traditional cultural practices that are compatible with conservation or sustainable use requirements" [cf. CBD: Article10(c)], specifically within agricultural systems.

Its objective is to promote conservation and adaptive management of globally significant agricultural biodiversity harboured in Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems.

This challenge is addressed by aiming to establish the basis for the recognition, conservation and sustainable management of GIAHS and their associated biodiversity throughout the world, through specific action programmes in pilot systems and activities to leverage global, regional and national policies and institutional support.

Expected project outcomes, are as follows:

1. An internationally accepted system for recognition of GIAHS is in place. Through this outcome the project will aim to raise awareness at the international and national levels, by informing, raising awareness and mobilising recognition of the global significance of GIAHS by multiple national and international stakeholders and public, and leveraging sustained institutional, financial and global policy incentives and support for their safeguard and continued evolution.

2. The conservation and adaptive management of globally significant agricultural biodiversity harboured in GIAHS is mainstreamed in sectoral and intersectoral plans and policies in pilot countries. The focus of this outcome will be on ensuring that key sectoral and inter-sectoral plans and policies (such as policies on protected areas, cultural heritage, in situ conservation of genetic resources for food and agriculture, agricultural extension, public participation, indigenous peoples, land tenure and access to natural resources) take explicit account of the significance of GIAHS.

3. Globally significant agricultural biodiversity in pilot GIAHS is being managed and sustainably used by empowering local communities and harnessing evolving economic, social, and policy processes and by adaptation of appropriate new technologies that allow interaction between ecological and cultural processes.  The strategy for this outcome explicitly recognizes that change in "traditional" political, social and economic processes is inevitable; they cannot be frozen or re-created. Consequently, it adopts the “adaptive management” approach to explore and develop novel political, social and economic processes that strengthen the existing management systems, and which generate the same biodiversity outcomes as much as possible– that is, maintain the same races, species and agroecosystems.  Thus, the processes may be different and contain new and modern elements, but the way they interact with the biophysical world will maintain the values of these agroecosystems.  The project has identified a range of different systems to test such new approaches on a case by case basis in a wide variety of settings. These pilot sites are: Chiloe Islands (Chile); Rice-fish system in Longxiang village of Zheijang Province (China); El Oued Oases (Algeria); Gafsa Oases (Tunisia); Micro del Carmen in the Vilcanota valley and Cuenca de Lares, both in Cusco Department, and Micro Cuenca de San José and Comunidad de Caritamaya, Provincia Acora (bordering on the southern side of lake Titicaca) in Puno Department (Peru); Ifugao Rice Terraces (Philippines); Maasai pastoralism (Kenya and Tanzania).

4. Lessons learned and best practices from promoting effective management of pilot GIAHS are widely disseminated to support expansion and upscaling of the GIAHS in other areas/countries and creation of the GIAHS network. This outcome will focus on documenting lessons learned and best practices, and enabling exchange of experience between and among sites, as well as establishing network of GIAHS.