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A Legacy for the Future Download Full Report |
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Abstarct For millennia communities of farmers, herders, fishers and forest people have developed complex, diverse, and locally adapted agricultural systems. These systems have been managed with time-tested, ingenious combinations of techniques and practices that have usually led to community food security, and the conservation of natural resources and biodiversity. Agricultural heritage systems can still be found throughout the world covering about 5 million hectares, which provide a vital combination of social, cultural, ecological and economical services to humankind. These Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems-GIAHS have resulted not only in outstanding landscapes of aesthetic beauty, maintenance of globally significant agricultural biodiversity, resilient ecosystems and a valuable cultural heritage. Above all, these systems sustainably provide multiple goods and services, food and livelihood security for millions of poor and small farmers. The existence of numerous GIAHS around the
world testifies to the inventiveness and ingenuity
of people in their use and management of finite
resources, biodiversity, ecosystem dynamics,
and ingenious use of physical attributes of the
landscape, codified in traditional but evolving
knowledge, practices and technologies. Whether
recognized or not by the scientific community,
these ancestral agricultural systems constitute
the foundation for contemporary and future
agricultural innovations and technologies.
Their cultural, ecological and agricultural diversity
is still evident in many parts of the world,
maintained as unique systems of agriculture.
Through a remarkable process of co-evolution of
Humankind and Nature, GIAHS have emerged
over centuries of cultural and biological interactions
and synergies, representing the accumulated
experiences of rural peoples. |
The designations employed and the presentation of material in the map does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of FAO concerning the legal or constitutional status of any country, territory or sea area, or concerning the delimitation of frontiers. |
© FAO 2011