Biocultural sovereignty ifip 2013

Keeping the Future Delicious!

Biocultural Sovereignty +

Agro-Ecosystem Diversity =

Resilience

Agro-biodiversity and Indigenous

Peoples Have Co-evolved

Christensen Fund Strategic Framework – Mission, Themes, Shared Outcomes and Cross Cutting Emphasis

Mission –backing the stewards of cultural and biological diversity

Ensuring Socio-Ecological

Resilience

Sustaining Foodways & Livelihoods

Celebrating & Revitalizing Cultural

Expression

Promoting Knowledge Systems & Biocultural Education

Active community adaptation to climate and

other changes

Ecosystem monitoring and assessments at community and biocultural landscapes

Improved diversity & productivity in

gardens, orchards, pastures and fisheries

Valued rare varieties & thriving complex landscape mosaic

maintained

Functioning ecological process and diversity

Capable and vibrant traditional owners and

community associations at land/seascapes scales

Expanding relationships and networks of

stewards and others, within, between and

beyond land/seascapes

Increased biocultural livelihoods options

Improved tenure security for sea/landscapes and

sacred sites

Blossoming traditions, cultural expression &

ceremonies

Local voices & biocultural diversity respected &

influencing decision making.

Festival and ceremonies celebrate biocultural

diversity.

Confident biocultural creative practitioners

Sacred sites spiritually vibrant

Formal education incorporates biocultural

knowledge.

Engaged young people in biocultural identity

and landscapes and blending new ideas with

traditional knowledge and strong

intergenerational bonds.

Widespread reframing and recognition of

relevance of indigenous rights & leadership.

Cross-cutting EmphasisRights & Representation ~ Gender Equality ~ Leadership Development ~ Creative Practitioners

Food Sovereignty part of Biocultural

Sovereignty– “Food sovereignty is the right of Peoples to define

their own policies and strategies for sustainable production, distribution, and consumption of food, with respect for their own cultures and their own systems of managing natural resources and rural areas, and is considered to be a precondition for Food Security.”

– “The rights to land, water, and territory, as well as the right to self determination, are essential for the full realization of our Food Security and Food Sovereignty.”

The “Declaration of Atitlan”, from the 1st Indigenous Peoples’ Global

Consultation on the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty, Guatemala, 2002

Enset Landscapes of SW Ethiopia

What is Enset?

• A cousin of the Banana

• Big, Green & Beautiful

• Locally domesticated; farmers manage gene flow between wild and cultivated

• Corm and pseudostem are starch-rich it’s NOT a fruit

• Great source of fiber

• Takes 4-7 yrs to mature: no tillage, deep mulch

• Intensely managed: in nutrient cycles, spatially in home & agroecosystem & aesthetics

• Often losing out in agricultural modernization

• Very culturally luminous

Dawro, Gamo Beehive hut built from

enset

Processing Enset

Processing

enset

Grant Making Strategies

• Supporting associations of communities in ensetlandscapes.

• Connecting farmers and researchers with other communities and landscapes globally

• Linking universities in a “consortium: to collaborate with farmers and community cultural associations to craft “Enset Parks”

• Re-valuing “kocho” culturally: food festivals, restaurants, schools

• Restoring long-term agro-ecosystem processes: water, carbon, nutrients

Indigenous Partnership for

Agrobidiversity and Food Sovereignty

• Amplifying Agro-ecological Solutions

Sharing Traditional Knowledge

• Indigenous Peoples’ Climate Change

• Assesment

Keeping the Future More Delicious