Criteria for system and site selection

This criterion strictly applies to the agricultural systemic level. It brings together several indicators: adaptive capacity, resilience, functional complexity and others brought forward in the stakeholder workshop (2^nd GIAHS workshop, 2004):

Diversity and Complexity: Possess functional (for instance risk mitigating) biophysical and socio-cultural diversity and complexity.

Systems Efficiency: Contribute to systems efficiency, minimising negative and maximising positive externalities concerning ecosystem health in terms of actual or potential fluxes or flows in resources and information or knowledge over space and time

Adaptive Capacity: Possess system flexibility and resilience, and adaptive capacity to cope with changing environmental or socio-economic conditions, stresses or opportunities

Integration: Integrate of complex relationships and positive connectivity and linkages between the systems' parts.

Ingenuity / Innovation: Contain ingenious or innovative solutions or adaptations to critical biophysical and socio-cultural constraints

Economic Viability and Sustainability: Possess financial and economic viability, and sustainability over the long term

Human Ecological Sustainability: Sustainability of human-environmental relations and trends in the long term, in the ecological and social sense (nutrient cycles, demography etc.).

These include five major groups of key resource endowments, goods and services and other features of the system:

(1) biodiversity and ecosystem functioning,

(2) landscape and land and water resource management characteristics,

(3) food and livelihood security,

(4) social organisation and culture (incl. customary institutions for agro-ecological management, normative arrangements for resource access and benefit sharing, value systems, rituals)

(5) knowledge systems and farmers technologies. (incl. technologies, associated value systems, knowledge transfer, language and oral traditions, arts, philosophy, cosmovisions)

Optional:

(6) other goods and services generated by the system (incl. ecosystems services, climate adaptation and other environmental benefits of global importance or specific features such as archeological/historic value or contribution to political stability)

For each element a range of sub-indicators will be developed. For instance, indicators can be developed for biodiversity on genetic, intra- and inter species, and endemic diversity, for inter-species dynamics, for ecosystem-diversity and integration, as well as for the taxonomic groups: plants, animal, microbial and ecosystem. Also, knowledge and cultural heritage endowments will be spelled out more concretely by creating specific categories, with indicators to match. The future development of detailed indicators is considered necessary on these characteristics. A proposed sixth category of the criterion has been added to allow for the description of specific additional benefits that may be of global importance.

Indicators for this criterion include:

Food and Livelihood Security: Contribute to food and livelihood security, especially in terms of risk-minimisation, among local communities on marginal lands, in remote locations and on the verge of poverty.

Benefits Maximisation: Maximise economic, social, livelihood and environmental benefits.

Social Cohesion: Promote social cohesion, solidarity and sense of belonging and identity.

Resource endowments and knowledge systems: Possess remarkable natural resource endowments (especially biodiversity) and intrinsic knowledge systems of global benefit.

Social and Cultural Diversity: Represent diverse social and cultural, institutional and economic approaches to management.

Public Goods: Provide global public goods and heritage which needed economic valuation

Traditional Knowledge: Maintain invaluable knowledge and technology about landscapes, genetic resources, human cultures, and social organisation and institutions

Relation to the land: everyday as well as associative values of the landscape and agro-ecosystem for peoples collective and individual survival and livelihood, their identity and spiritual, religious, philosophical life and the artistic expressions thereof.

Criterion on demonstrated value of agricultural livelihood systems for humankind as a heritage handed down through generations.

Economic Viability and Sustainability: Possess financial and economic viability, and sustainability over the long term

Adaptive Capacity: Possess system flexibility and resilience, and adaptive capacity to cope with changing environmental or socio-economic conditions, stresses or opportunities

Human Ecological Sustainability: Sustainability of human-environmental relations and trends in the long term, in the ecological and social sense (nutrient cycles, demography etc.).

This criterion is of great importance for eligibility for GEF funding (Incremental Value) and for the possibility of the creation of a separate category of UNESCO World Heritage (Outstanding Universal Value)

This criterion brings together the following indicators:

Public Goods: Provide global public goods and heritage which deserve economic valuation

Value-added: Attribute due value of global benefits through global heritage recognition, such as labelling, and World Heritage and Conservation classification.

This criterion includes the following elements:

(1) ecosystems and eco-regions,

(2) systemic,

(3) scalar impacts,

(4) geography,

(5) demonstration value

Indicators include:

Geography: Be located within easy access in different continents, at least for learning and demonstration effects

Eco-regions & Ecosystems: Represent different major eco-regions and ecosystem types (mountains, tropics, dry lands, coastal zones, etc.)

Systemic: Represent major agricultural production systems (livestock, crops, fish, forest-based), ranging from sedentary (e.g. terraces, oases) to highly mobile systems (e.g. mobility of people and resource use in flood recession, transhumance, altitudinal migrations), used in eco-regions by large numbers of people

Scalar Impacts: Possess the potential of extensive impacts in terms of surface area and/or beneficiaries, for the replication or dissemination of experience and lessons learnt, the transfer of knowledge or technology, the learning of unique adaptations to specific constraints, and the contribution to diversity (worth preserving, value of uniqueness, global heritage for preservation, potential lessons for the future)

Demonstration Effect: Demonstrate its conservation and heritage value to society as a whole

Outstanding Examples: Be outstanding examples of specific systems across agro-ecological zones (AEZ), biomes, mountain ranges, rangelands and water types, ranging from the sedentary (e.g. terraced farming) to the highly mobile (e.g. transhumance)

For the pilot systems it is required that they represent an array of typical threats or general global trends that induce rapid changes such as: environmental change, economic globalization, demographic change, blanket agricultural policies and technologies, legislation for access, use and benefit sharing of natural resources, etc.

Indicators include:

External Threats: Exhibit a range of different external threats (e.g. specialisation, standardisation, globalisation, climate change, etc.) posing challenges for the design of viable alternative solutions, potentially transferable from other sites within eco-region

This criterion encompasses mainly two dimensions:

1. Representativity of the problematics and of common issues of agricultural heritage systems that need a policy, legal or institutional solution, for instance, in the field of access to resources and legal pluralism and the protection of cultural property and local and indigenous knowledge and benefit sharing.

2. Sustainability benchmarks: Can the system provide benchmarks for the integrated and sustainable management of agricultural systems, for rural development and for in situ conservation of agricultural biodiversity? Are they light houses of sustainable agriculture?

Indicators to be developed.

Indicators include:

Project Integration: Willingness of local and national institutions to host and integrate the project

Partnerships: Enable formation of partnership arrangements and networks among multiple social actors, including stakeholders, through participatory processes

International Conventions: Country ratification of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) and the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources (ITPGR).

Co-finance Potential: Attract potential co-finance from multilateral (e.g. GEF), bilateral and national institutions

This criterion has five main elements:

(1) Potentially contribute to all project goals (recognition, conservation, and sustainable management),

(2) eco-systems approach (reflect fully the GIAHS concept),

(3) contribute to international conventions: CBD, CCD, FCCC, ITPGR,

(4) build on existing initiatives, policies and experiences,

(5) participatory management / sensitivity to indigenous and community issues.

Indicators include:

International Conventions: Contribute to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) and the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources (ITPGR).

Incremental Approach: Build on existing agricultural policies and programmes in philosophy, especially in terms of participatory and ecosystem approaches

Community Empowerment: Empower local people or communities towards participatory involvement

Respect: Respect for and sensitivity to individual and collective human rights and rights over traditional knowledge of indigenous and local communities.

Decentralisation: Represent decentralised systems of functioning, decision-making and management

Ecosystems Approach: Promote an ecosystems approach to traditional agricultural systems management at appropriate scales

Programmatic Approach: Be developed through a programmatic approach, with Phase I developing and testing methods at a limited number of pilot sites, and Phase II building a world-wide consortium of globally-important ingenious agricultural heritage sites

Value-added: Add value for global benefits through global heritage recognition, such as labelling, and World Heritage and Conservation classification.