Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) leads the programme Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), which helps identify ways to mitigate threats faced by these systems and their people and enhance the benefits derived from these dynamic systems.

Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems recognize remarkable land use systems and landscapes full of life and biodiversity, resilient ecosystems, and valuable cultural heritages managed by farmers, herders, fisherfolk, and forest people. Communities that have preserved and developed complex, diverse, and locally adapted agricultural systems that nowadays provide sustainably many goods and services, food, and livelihood security for millions of people around the world.

As of November 2023, the GIAHS Programme has awarded the designation to 86 sites in 26 countries, with 10 additional proposals in queue.