Biocultural Diversity for Food System Transformation Under Global Environmental Change

Abstract

Biocultural diversity is central to the nutrition, resilience, and adaptive capacity of Indigenous and traditional peoples, who collectively maintain the longest ongoing human experiences with the provision of food under environmental change. In the form of crops and livestock and associated knowledge on their cultivation and use, food-related biocultural diversity likewise underpins global food security. As food system transformation is increasingly recognized as an urgent priority, we argue that food security, sustainability, resilience, and adaptive capacity can be furthered through greater emphasis on conservation, use, and celebration of food-related biocultural diversity. We provide examples from the Parque de la Papa, Peru, a “food biocultural diversity neighborhood” which through advocacy and partnerships based around its diversity, has both enhanced local communities and contributed to food security at a much larger scale. We outline collaborative actions which we believe are important to up- and out-scale food biocultural diversity neighborhood successes. Further research and knowledge sharing are critical to better document, understand, track, and communicate the value, functions, and state of biocultural diversity in food systems. Expanded training and capacity development opportunities are important to enable the interchange of experiences and visions on food, health, sustainability and resilience, climate adaptation, equity and justice, and livelihood generation with others facing similar challenges. Finally, strengthened networking across food biocultural diversity neighborhoods is essential to their persistence and growth as they increasingly engage with local, national, and international organizations, based on shared interests and on their own terms, across five continents.

The next era of crop domestication starts now

“…As of 2019, the global population relied on rice, wheat, and maize for more than 40% of its calories, with a handful of crops—annual cereals, legumes, sugarcane, and roots/tubers—making up more than 75% of plant-based calories ( 22 ). Furthermore, the increased cultivation of and reliance on just a few crops has contributed to the loss and imperilment of critical agrobiodiversity ( 23 ) and accompanying biocultural knowledge ( 24 ).…”

Innovate or Perish: Food Policy Design in an Indigenous Context in a Post-Pandemic and Climate Adaptation Era

“…The threat of modernity has always lurked, and indigenous peoples and their food systems have in most cases adopted external cultural elements that enable their survival in order not to perish. According to [68], indigenous peoples have been affected by economic and agricultural development and related policies, including the industrialization of production, combined with trade agreements that undetermined local competitiveness. This makes biocultural food heritage part of an open innovation ecosystem due to its historical persistence and socio-ecological attributes that allow a configuration of indigenous territories.…”

The need to enhance crop, livestock and aquatic genetic diversity in food systems

“…The FAO (2021c) highlights six pathways for achieving the required food system transformation towards more resilience to the earlier-mentioned drivers (conflict, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns) and subsequent improved food security: Both food systems and food security are connected to, and dependent on, genetic resources used in crop and livestock breeding (Argumedo, 2021). Especially regarding point 2 of the above pathways, CLAGD plays an import role.…”