Indigenous peoples' knowledge systems, fisheries and environmental challenges: Contributions from FAO

There is a growing understanding at global level on the importance of preserving Indigenous Peoples' food and knowledge systems. Those not only play a determinant role in the food security and well-being of the 476 million of Indigenous Peoples worldwide. They can also provide some of the answers for the transformation towards more sustainable food systems across the world.

Indigenous Peoples’ food systems share unique and common characteristics of sustainability and resilience. In particular, they are based on both food generation (e.g. fishing, hunting, gathering) and food production (e.g. shifting cultivation, herding), and are rooted in unique worldviews, values and knowledge systems. Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge systems are carried from one generation to another thanks to specific ways of learning embodied in their languages. 

Whilst a right-based approach (UNDRIP, FPIC) is a pre-condition to design effective policies aiming to support Indigenous Peoples’ food systems, there is primarily the need to also better understand those. In 2015, FAO Members endorsed the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication aligned with those international legal frameworks.

In this context, Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems pioneers new ways in which knowledge is created. It brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts to generate evidence and bridge the gap of knowledge between scientific and Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge systems.

Since its official endorsement in 2020, the Global-Hub has published several technical papers, inviting to rethink the hierarchies of knowledge, and support global policy processes that may affect Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems.

Recently, FAO PSUI and the Global-Hub have deepened their work on marine and freshwater-based food systems. In 2021, FAO worked with Massey university, Alliance of BI-CIAT, and the Melanesians people of Baniata to profile to profile their food system in Solomon Islands. It resulted in an increased understanding on the challenges faced by this community despite the outstanding biodiversity available for their food and nutrition.

In 2023, FAO hosted the II Session of the UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum, that brought together 186 Indigenous Youth from the seven socio-cultural regions. The resulting Rome Declaration on Safeguarding Seven Generations in Times of Food, Social and Ecological Crisis provides 49 policy recommendations distributed around 7 main thematic areas. The 20 Indigenous Youth from the Pacific delegation emphasized on the need to preserve their food and knowledge systems in the context of increasing impacts of climate change. Finally, in 2023, the Global-Hub created a Pacific Research Group dedicated to the better understanding and preservation of Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems in the region.