International conference on agrobiodiversity: sharing best practice in nature-based solutions from forest and farm producer organisation
Agrobiodiversity is essential for future food security in a world where climate change increasingly threatens single crop systems. Smallholder forest and farm producers’ organisations (FFPOs) and Indigenous Peoples and local communites groups are the custodians of much more sophisticated and diverse farming systems on which that food security can be built.
To allow peer-to-peer exchange between these groups about how to advance agrobiodiversity, IIED worked with Li-Bird and the government of Nepal, together with FAO, IUCN and Agricord (partners of the Forest and Farm Facility – FFF) to facilitate an international agrobiodiversity conference held in Pokhara, Nepal from 9-12 April 2024. The conference brought together 180 in-person participants from 32 countries, and as many as 1,200-plus online participants – including many representatives of FFPOs and Indigenous Peoples and local communites groups from both national, regional and global organisations. The conference involved a share fare and four field visits to allow peer-to-peer learning and exchange.
Technical sessions involved presentations, panel question and answer sessions and working groups covering:
- What agrobiodiversity is and why it matters
- How policies shape agroecology approaches that help to protect and manage agrobiodiversity for better or worse
- Traditional knowledge of agroforestry systems and knowledge exchange practices that maintain agrobiodiversity
- Seed and farm management techniques and innovations to sustain agrobiodiversity
- Enterprise innovations that encourage diversification in what is planted, and
- Nature finance – mechanisms that improve flows to FFPOs and Indigenous Peoples and local communites.
This report summarises the conference and also presents a call to action for decision makers including the need to do better than get 0.3% (circa US$ 2 billion) of international climate and nature finance to FFPOs and Indigenous Peoples and local community groups when smallholders themselves are annually having to invest $368 billion in necessary climate adaptation.
Cite this publication
Available at https://www.iied.org/22451g