Details:
  • Moderator: Dr. Ram Krishna Shrestha, Joint Secretary, MoALD
  • Kamal Kumar Rai and video welcome from IIFB: the importance of agrobiodiversity from an Indigenous perspective (15 minutes)
  • Duncan Macqueen, Director of Forests, IIED: report framing agrobiodiversity management
  • Ms Maria Josefina Guadalupe Manicad - Bioversity International: Priorities emerging from prior conversations on agrobiodiversity (15 minutes)
  • Dr. Bal Krishna Joshi, Chief, National Genebank, Nepal: Agrobiodiversity policies and practice innovations in Nepal
  • Damian Sulumo, CEO, Mviwaarusha, Tanzania: Key constraints to agrobiodiversity conservation from a smallholder perspective – and how to address them.
  • Plenary discussion and closing of the session
Objectives:
  • To reflect on the general importance of agrobiodiversity management led by forest and farm producers both in Nepal and globally, and to highlight emerging concerns such as the expansion of monoculture systems and the increasing fragility of those systems to climate change in ways that threaten global food security.
  • Agrobiodiversity is what feeds, fuels and furnishes humanity with natural products and ecosystem services (where agriculture is now the largest land use). The session will involve five speakers who will: present the importance of agrobiodiversity from an Indigenous perspective; introduce a framework for agrobiodiversity management; summarize prior conference outcomes from global programmes on agrobiodiversity; introduce agrobiodiversity policies and practice innovations in Nepal; Outline some key constraints to agrobiodiversity conservation from an FFPO perspective. The framework for considering agrobiodiversity will include policies, traditional knowledge, seed and agronomy, enterprise development strategies, and financing. That framework shapes the subsequent sessions of the conference – and each session is to be informed by FFPOs’ experiences - to set the scene for the focus and theme of this conference.
“To bring people together to share innovative traditional and scientific knowledge on how FFPOs and IPLC organizations can advance agroecological practices, agrobiodiverse planting materials and climate smart business and finance models that enrich nature and nutrition”

Frequently Asked Questions

Agrobiodiversity (agricultural biodiversity) is ‘the subset of biodiversity found within agroecosystems (agricultural ecosystems), including the variety and variability of animals, plants, micro-organisms and wild foods at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels, which are necessary to sustain key functions of those agroecosystem’. It is a key component of agroecology and has multiple benefits including: food security and livelihood resilience, nutritional and health benefits, the provision of biomass energy and household materials, preservation of biocultural heritage, and the maintenance of ecosystem services including climate change mitigation.

Agroecology is the ‘the application of ecological approaches to agriculture’. It aims to employ management practices that use nature’s own cost-efficient processes to benefit production, ecological integrity of farms, and climate change adaptation. The practices are embedded in traditional knowledge and ever evolving local innovations that use renewable resources (nutrients, biomass, water) efficiently, thus decreasing the need for external resources such as agrochemicals.  In addition, agroecology promotes diversification of production and products, minimizing harm to nature and improving nature’s functionality in the benefit of production.

It is from 9-12 April, 2024

The conference is happening at Hotel Grande, Pokhara.

ORGANIZERS AND PARTNERS

The Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) is a partnership between FAO, IIED, IUCN, and AgriCord, strengthening Forest and Farm Producer Organizations for improved livelihoods and climate-resilient landscape