indigenous

This briefing by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) highlights how indigenous knowledge and practices play a crucial role in maintaining and enhancing genetic diversity, which reduces agricultural risk and increases resilience to climate change. Evidence from the SIFOR project (Smallholder Innovation for Resilience) in Kenya, India, China and Peru shows how these practices can significantly enhance productivity, incomes and resilience in harsh environments, contributing to the targets set out in Sustainable Development Goal 2. »

This report by Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment describes a current indigenous soil management system in West Africa, in which targeted waste deposition transforms highly weathered, nutrient- and carbon-poor tropical soils into enduringly fertile, carbon-rich black soils, hereafter “African Dark Earths” (AfDE). AfDE provide a model for improving the fertility of highly degraded soils in an environmentally and socially appropriate way, in resource-poor and food-insecure regions of the world. The method is also “climate-smart”, as these soils sequester carbon and enhance the climate-change mitigation potential of carbon-poor tropical soils. »

This article is highlighting the way millions of African farmers, with their indigenous systems, adapt to climate change. 33 case studies released by the Oakland Institute demonstrate with facts and figures how an agricultural transformation respectful of the farmers and their environment can yield immense economic, social, and food security benefits while also fighting climate change and restoring soils and the environment. »

This extended report showcases the changes in livelihood and food security among indigenous shifting cultivation communities in South and Southeast Asia. It focuses on the challenges for indigenous peoples in countries that experience rapid socio-economic transformations with case studies from Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal and Thailand. The case studies identify external and internal factors that hinder and facilitate livelihood creation and food security. »

On the 2-3 February 2015, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organized a technical meeting betwen Indigenous Peoples’ respresentatives and FAO staff. This report includes the work plan based on the main suggestions made for how FAO and indigenous peoples can collaborate in the short, medium and long term. The report identifies concrete steps that can be followed in relation to the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication, known as the SSF Guidelines, inidgenous food systems and fishers among others. »