 Right, well I think we'll get started now, big, very warm welcome to all of you to this workshop on Indigenous food systems, biocultural heritage and the SDGs. It's great to see so many of you from different cultures. My name is Christina Swaderska, I'm a researcher at IED, focusing on biocultural heritage and food systems and I'm very pleased to be organising this workshop with Kew Botanic Gardens. This workshop consists of a series of four webinars today and next week, we're having three more webinars, they're all linked part of the same workshop. So to provide a bit of introduction to the workshop, I firstly wanted to say that this workshop is quite unusual in some ways. Firstly because it brings together a really wide variety of participants. So we have universities, we have Kew Gardens and we have researchers covering a range of disciplines, so humanities, botany and also interdisciplinary subjects like ethno-botany. And we also have action researchers like IED and our southern partners who are working to promote environmental sustainability and to empower Indigenous peoples and also to influence policy. And then we have a number of Indigenous representatives from the Arctic, the Sami Council, Brazil, Peru, Kenya, Botswana, Chad, India, China, the Philippines and Thailand. So it's wonderful to have so many different participants. I think we all need to work together to address the big challenges facing Indigenous peoples' food systems. So this workshop's also unusual in that the focus Indigenous food systems have not received a lot of attention from researchers or from policymakers and also because we're focusing on whole food systems, so not just production, not just Indigenous crops, but also the preparation, the processing and the cooking methods that are needed to enable their consumption. So the objectives of the workshop, firstly, is to promote an equitable and inclusive intercultural dialogue where all types of knowledge are valued equally. Secondly, to explore the role of Indigenous peoples' food systems in achieving the sustainable development goals. And we also want to explore new ideas for empowering interdisciplinary research on Indigenous peoples' food systems and to build new networks and partnerships that bring together these different disciplines and different actors. So I'm really pleased that we're organizing this workshop with Philippa Ryan from Kew Gardens. She's an ethnobotanist and archaeobotanist. And this workshop forms part of a joint project on Indigenous food systems, biocultural heritage and agricultural resilience, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK and the Global Challenges Research Fund. So I would like to just provide a little bit of background now on Indigenous peoples' food systems. First of all, there are about 476 million Indigenous peoples in total, speaking more than 4,000 languages. And Indigenous peoples are the custodians of about 80% of the world's biodiversity. But this rich biocultural diversity is facing unprecedented threats. The UN recently announced that none of the 2020 ICHI biodiversity targets will be met. And UNESCO has estimated that over 20 Indigenous languages are lost each year. And with the loss of Indigenous cultures and languages and the passing of Indigenous elders, we are losing unique ecological knowledge, values and worldviews for biodiversity conservation and for sustainable development. Sadly, many Indigenous peoples have suffered violent colonisation, and Indigenous peoples continue to be colonised today in different ways by dominant Euro-Western cultures. They continue to suffer widespread racial discrimination and marginalisation and growing violence against environmental defenders. For decades, Indigenous peoples have been calling for their rights to land and self-determination to be respected. These rights are now enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But unfortunately, their rights are still widely threatened. And many Indigenous peoples are still struggling to be recognised as Indigenous peoples. COVID-19 has been devastating for the health of many Indigenous peoples. But it has also demonstrated the great resilience of their localised food systems, which have provided a vital safety net during this crisis. Indigenous food systems are very diverse, but they also have a number of common features. So they sustain high levels of biodiversity, including many of the world's underutilised species and varieties. Through agro-ecological practices and adaptive resource management and the protection of sacred sites, they promote efficient use of natural resources, for example, through circular farming methods, soil and water conservation, and they use a lot less water than modern chemical-intensive farming systems and emit a lot less carbon. They also sustain vital ecosystem services and are often more resilient to climate change than modern farming systems and modern crop varieties. Indigenous crops and landraces have also been found to be more nutritious than their modern hybrid equivalents. And another common feature is that Indigenous food systems are rooted in Indigenous cultures and identity and spirituality and solidarity. So across the world, many Indigenous food systems are already achieving zero hunger. That's SDG2. But the transition to modern foods is leading to growing health problems in western countries, but also in southern countries. So obesity and diabetes is increasingly prevalent. And in some climate constrained areas like the Sahel, the loss of traditional knowledge is directly linked to hunger and food insecurity, according to the World Food Programme. So Indigenous food systems are critical for achieving many SDGs, not just ending hunger, but also protecting ecosystems and biodiversity, SDG15, SDG13 on climate action, SDG1 and 10 on ending poverty and inequality, and SDG3 on health and well-being. But unfortunately, they are often seen as backward or unproductive and are often undermined by policies promoting industrial agri-food systems and resource extraction and protected areas. So Indigenous peoples not only conserve biodiversity, but they've created biodiversity-rich landscapes and a huge diversity of domesticated crops and livestock over generations. This biodiversity is their cultural heritage. When native potato varieties were repatriated to Andean communities in the Tato Park in Peru, the Indigenous knowledge and the culture and the rituals embedded in those varieties were also revived. And of course, Indigenous women play a key role in sustaining these food systems, from nurturing seeds to cuisine. So the concept of biocultural heritage reflects Indigenous peoples' holistic worldviews, where Indigenous knowledge and biodiversity and landscapes and cultural and spiritual values are inextricably linked. So the biodiversity and the cultural heritage is inextricably linked and cannot be separated. This concept emerged from work with Quechua communities in the Tato Park by the NGO Andes and also was validated through research by IID and partners. It bridges sectoral silos and bridges knowledge systems and it also reaffirms the rights of Indigenous peoples over their ancestral genetic resources and landscapes. So before handing over to IID's director to say a few words, I am just to briefly introduce the four webinars. So today we have some opening presentations and then we'll have half an hour break and then we'll have a live-streamed interaction with Indigenous experts in the potato park, which you can see behind me. Then next week, on Tuesday, we will explore Indigenous food systems in China, India and Kenya and these are the three case studies in our AHRC grant. And then on Wednesday next week, we'll explore Indigenous peoples' priorities for research on Indigenous food systems and also the interdisciplinary research gaps that need addressing. And then finally on Thursday, we'll look at interdisciplinary research methods and decolonising research methods. So the results of these four webinars we're going to use to help us design new research on Indigenous food systems and also to inform a number of policy processes in 2021. So the Biodiversity Convention, COP 15, the World Food Systems Summit and the Climate Change, COP 26. So finally, I just wanted to say a very warm welcome to all of you and please can I remind you to try and speak slowly and clearly and avoid using technical jargon. Thank you very much and now I would like to introduce Andrew Norton, who is the Director of IID, to say a few words. Thank you. Well, a huge thanks, Kristina and many thanks to you and to everyone here also for giving me the honour of kind of kicking off with some welcoming remarks. I joined IID about five years ago. IID, I guess if you have to describe it very quickly, our main passion is for social and environmental justice and it's harder to think of any topic that is more central to that than the one that you will be discussing. Personally, I'm a social anthropologist by background. I did my first field work in West Africa in Mali and this also resonates hugely with me at a personal level. So it's a real honour to be introducing this session. Just a few thoughts from me about really the global context for your discussions. It's seemed to me that the Ipbess big blockbuster report of 2019, the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services, was a kind of watershed moment a bit like the IPCC 1.5 report on climate change. It's pushed the issues in a much more solid way into global public debate and there's one particular conclusion of that report that I'd like to highlight. I'm sure many of you will be familiar. This is from the summary for policymakers. Nature is generally declining less rapidly in indigenous peoples lands than in other lands. So that's a really significant finding, hugely significant obviously for CBD and for the COP 15 that's been postponed to next year. So, I mean, two questions about that. The first is why do you get that result? And I think the material that you'll be discussing here is really the bulk of the answer to that. Food systems, livelihood systems that are embedded in cultural systems that have evolved through deep ancestral knowledge over generations produces that better stewardship of ecosystems and of the natural world that we see in that result. But then there's a question also of, you know, if we have cultures that are skilled and highly effective at understanding and managing the local natural world, what does that finding imply? And I guess the first thing is that it implies an urgent need to better protect the natural resource rights and the indeed the human rights and local space for agency and self-determination of indigenous peoples worldwide. This is a broad and very political agenda and a very challenging agenda, but a really urgent one. And the emphasis on global biodiversity can, I think, push us to see that in more urgent and stark terms. Christina mentioned in her introduction, the terrible impact that COVID has had on some indigenous peoples at a health level, but there is also disturbing emerging picture from some countries. I don't think the evidence is yet aggregated much that COVID can also provide a cover for the rollback of these rights and this kind of control as well. I mean, obviously in certain environments rather than others. But that is also something we need to be very aware of and need to seek any way we can really of promoting mobilization around protecting most critical, that critical right to self-determination agency and natural resource rights that is central to this agenda. But the other, I guess, implication from the adverse finding is what can be learned from the lands that are under, if you like, management or control of indigenous peoples to help the world find ways of having better stewardship on a global scale of biodiversity. So there's also the question of are there transferable lessons? If so, what are they and how can that benevolent impact that the sort of management of local food systems, local livelihood systems, has a local biodiversity? How can that be made more meaningful at a global level? So it's just a final word that I mean the topic of this seminar is incredibly important, incredibly relevant and it also has, I think, compelling connections to the actions that we need to take on a global scale to protect our natural world. Christina, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Andy. It bears is the intergovernmental panel for ecosystem biodiversity and ecosystem services. That's great, really useful background, Andy. I'm now going to ask a Philippa Ryan from Q Gardens who's going to say a few words of introduction. Thanks. Hi everyone. It's great to see so many of you here today from such a broad range of disciplines, cultures and backgrounds. Research into indigenous food systems and crops has tended to cross cut many academic disciplines and organisations. There can be many different aims and methods and as a result, research can often remain largely disconnected and often focuses on particular elements within food systems. Holistic approaches would reflect the interconnectedness between crop diversity environments and agricultural practices, between crop choices and foods, and between traditional agricultural and food knowledge and heritage. One of the aims of this workshop is to bring together academics and researchers spanning lots of disciplines and methods to try and create ideas for more interdisciplinary approaches which are set within the framework of local priorities, cultural contexts and broad-ranging aims. For example, exploring the potential of ethnobotany as an approach that naturally helps to connect botanical sciences and humanities and can also link studies across different components of food systems from crops through to cuisine. And also to consider historical approaches such as documenting farmers' memories about disappearing crops or changing practices in local foods and also potentially drawing on archival and archaeological sources to find out more about long-term crop histories. So, while people often think of Q as a taxonomic institute, food security and ethnobotany are also very big subjects here and these are always grounded on taxonomy because accurate plant identification and understanding the evolutionary relationships and depends research into end-utilized and threatened crops and global conservation efforts. And although Q is an old institution, it has adapted. It's been a leader in the practical application of the conservation of biological diversity including prior informed consent and benefit sharing and this project is all firmly grounded in participatory approaches. It's very fitting that we're co-hosting this meeting but of course we can always do better and prompted by all the events of this summer, a staff-led initiative decolonizing Q with strong support from the director and director of science is both reexamining Q's history and also aspects of the way we do and communicate science to see how we can do better. And so it's very fitting that we're co-hosting this meeting and discussions in this workshop will surely contribute to this process. I'm really looking forward to hearing all your thoughts and ideas and I'll pass back to Christina. Great, thanks so much Philippa, it's great to hear about the decolonizing Q program. So I think we need to move on to the opening presentations. So first of all we have the FAO so I'd like to introduce John Fernandez de la Rinoa who is the head of the FAO Indigenous Peoples Unit and also Anne Brunel, it's a focal point on Indigenous food systems in the Indigenous Peoples Unit at FAO and I would like to say I'm going to keep track on time, the speakers have 10 minutes and when you have one minute left I'm going to do this, my African drum, I hope you can hear it. So please, you have the floor. Thank you so much Christina and thank you so much to Andrew Norton for the invitation and of course to Philippa Ryan. First of all it is a great pleasure to present with Georgie Carigno, Simon Mitambo, Jules Spreti and of course Harriet Kunleng with whom we have been collaborating for several years. My name is John Fernandez de la Rinoa, I head the Indigenous Peoples Unit in FAO and I will be presented together with Anne Brunel. Now you might be wondering what is FAO doing in relation to Indigenous Peoples Food Systems. Let me start with the first take-home message and it is that food systems as we have conceived them so far will not be able to fit humanity in a sustainable way unless they are reinvented with a much stronger environmental considerations included. The second message I would like to start with is that today academic scientists are more open towards other forms of knowledge including indigenous scientific knowledge and this is partly due to the unanswered questions raising from the COVID-19. The previous presenters talked about the colonizing and my third take-home message will be that we need to start by the colonizing our own minds that's where most of the difficulties are starting. Now as you may know there is an ongoing global debate on food systems and everybody's looking at how they can be made more sustainable and resilient in the face of climate change. This discussion started in the frame of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition which has served as an umbrella for a number of important initiatives like the Voluntary Guidelines on Nutrition and Food Systems that are being discussed in the Committee on World Food Security. But probably the most important discussion forum that we have ahead of us is the UN Food Systems Summit which is going to be organized in 2021 under the frame of the UN Decade of Action. It is expected that this UN Food Systems Summit is going to put forward policies and conceptual framework for the next 20 years in relation to food systems. So it is a great opportunity for indigenous peoples and the tremendous knowledge that they have accumulated for centuries to be put at the table of the discussions to be put at front and to show all of us how they've been feeding their populations for hundreds of years and yet as it was mentioned earlier they still managed to preserve 80% of the remaining biodiversity that means that a lot of the biodiversity we have managed to annihilate it by other forms of production or the forms of generation of food. Now the work of FAO on indigenous food systems started in 2015 and this was the recommendation from indigenous leaders to include a dedicated area of work on indigenous food systems. But in a way the work started earlier. It started by the Nutrition Division in 2009 and this was thanks to experts like Harriet Culnain that is with us today of McGill and Sine, Chief Erasmus and other experts. So that's when FAO started putting together a conceptual framework to look into indigenous food systems from a nutrition and sustainability point of view. In 2017 together with Biodiversity International we developed a methodology to profile indigenous food systems across the world looking into particularly all the sustainability characteristics. We've been working on several indigenous food systems across the world. Some of them we have managed to publish others have not been published and this is an ongoing work that we are doing with indigenous organizations and research institutions that have a field orientation all over the world. Let me continue by saying that the methodology that was developed to profile all of these indigenous food systems is looking at sustainability and resilience in the terms of adequacy of income generation, the adequacy of diets, the natural resource use, ecosystem conservation and resilience. The methodology is based on the five principles of sustainability and is also inspired in the sharp indicators with a strong look into the use of energy within the systems. Let me pass the floor to my colleague Anne Brunel who is going to talk about the high level expert seminar that was put together in 2018 in a field to advance conceptually this framework. Over to you Anne. Thank you Jan. Good morning, good afternoon to all. I will continue briefly on the expert seminar that FAO CORE organized in 2018 together with Spilak, UN Permanent Forum, UNESCO and DOSIP. Just to give you an idea it was the first time in FAO history that we could organize or we organized a high level expert seminar indigenous people food systems and it gathered 200 participants from 22 indigenous peoples, 20 universities, we had 23 country delegates and 70 of the 200 participants were speakers. So I will go now through the main technical discussions and I stop my presentation here for the moment. On the main technical discussions that were during the three days. So we talk about nine topics mainly on the contribution of indigenous people's food system to their hunger, so SDG2. The tradition entrains indigenous food systems, how knowledge is transmitted from the address to the youth generation, access to markets, climate change and resilience, the use of natural resources, diets and nutrition, governance systems. We also had a look at shift in cultivation and how it can enhance the sustainability of the food systems and then in the end we had also a special discussion on the food systems in the mountain areas. So that was really the the topic during the the the three days and key messages came out of this thematic discussions. So I will go through them one by one. So in Finay we recognized that indigenous food systems are efficient food systems. They feed local people in a nutritious way and at the same time they keep the balance of a fragile environment. We also recognize that the indigenous cultures and ecosystems is survival is dependent on the preservation and the transmission of traditional knowledge. We also saw that innovation and commercialization, sorry, of indigenous foods and on indigenous foods needs to include indigenous peoples from the very beginning to the end of the value change in all process and mechanism. We also saw that indigenous food systems are a big part of the solution against climate change in the fight against climate change. We also saw that natural resource management of indigenous peoples needs is very important and needs to be integrated in all decision making of governments related to management of a land. We recognize the need to further the research on food composition of indigenous food for food security and nutrition of indigenous communities. We also stressed on the governance practices of indigenous peoples and how it should be recognized by national nations and countries. And finally we saw the many dimensions of sustainability of shifting cultivation which is not seen as a practice only but as a holistic lifestyle. So if I go on to develop on the way to learn the way forward of the footages of this expert seminar, the three objectives were to enhance the learning, the preservation and the promotion of indigenous food systems. So the key recommendation that the expert made based on this key messages were to enhance dedicated participatory research and documentation on food systems with indigenous communities to establish also mechanism of collaboration and research that enables the blending of traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge systems. We also said that it was important to enhance the research on food composition as I said already earlier and to map institutions, laws and norms at country level which can harm indigenous food systems. And on this point I would like also to make a highlight based on the profiling that we did and that John presented we realize how much policy conservations also well intended can harm the indigenous peoples food systems. And so one of the one aspects that could be developed further in how is how this conservation policies affect the sustainability of the food systems. We also thought that it could be interesting to develop research on the role of customary institutions and indigenous knowledge in the preservation of the food systems, the role of women in the in indigenous food systems and I'm almost done and so and so to end up with all these recommendations one of the main output was the creation of the Global Hub on indigenous food systems that we've gathered all these messages is a platform rewriting actors and enhance the work toward food systems and I will pass the floor back to you and again I'm sorry John for the very last words. Oh that's fine Christina indulge me with one minute and I will complete the presentation. The Global Hub on indigenous people's food systems was launched last week last Friday at the FAO technical committee on agriculture with the ministers of agriculture gather every two years and it was officially endorsed by FAO members. Now the main objective of this Global Hub is to support the incorporation. Sorry I can't hear you very well could you speak closer to the mic please. It's better hello yeah if I swallow the mic please help me out can you hear me now Christina yeah all right I was saying that the main objective of this Global Hub is to support the incorporation of indigenous food systems at the global regional and national policy debates about food systems. It is a platform that right now brings together 17 institutions that are doing research and analysis together with indigenous peoples in the ground. The founding members are Biodiversity International, C4Ecraft, the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, AIPP and FAO. But ever since the launching of the hub, Senesta, Filak, Gaia Mazzona, the University of Greenwich, Infoots, Massey University, McGill University, Monash University, the Sámi Parliament from Finland, the indigenous partnership for agrobio-diversity and food sovereignty UNESCO and UNCCC have also joined the Global Hub. We will be providing more information about the what is planned for the Global Hub on the session on Wednesday 14th of October during the third webinar. So let me stop here thanking you for your attention and passing the floor over to you Christina thank you so much. Great thank you so much John Fernandes and and Brunel it's really great to have you part of this workshop we can build on that seminar that you had in 2018 that brought together so many indigenous peoples and identified these key challenges and can't wait to hear more about the hub next Tuesday next Wednesday. So we now have a presentation by Joji Carignot about indigenous food systems in Asia and Joji is an Abbaloi Igorot from the Cordillera in the Philippines and she is a senior policy advisor at the Forest Peoples Programme so we're really pleased to have you here and also a very long-term active advocacy on biodiversity convention on indigenous issues. Please go ahead to Joji welcome. Thanks very much Christina. I'd like to greet all of you from my hometown in Baguio City here in the Philippines to share some perspectives on indigenous food systems with a focus on Asia. In Asia similar to other regions of the world mainstream economic development and modern agriculture focused on commercial crops and plantations has actually overtaken traditional farming by many indigenous communities also leading to devaluation and erosion of indigenous and local knowledge. Nonetheless indigenous food systems are alive and there is an important job ahead of us of revitalization of indigenous and local food systems. For example here in the Cordillera some of the rice terrace systems which I'll be talking about are falling under disrepair. Areas under Sweden agriculture or rotational farming have been shrinking and there has been a rapid change in foods diets and nutrition so I think so I think we need to realize indeed that we are in a historic transition in food and agricultural policy link but this will be very closely linked to transitions in knowledge and technologies including our visions our planning and our actions on the revitalization of indigenous and local food systems. At this point I'd like to say that when we first had the UN year on biodiversity indigenous peoples underlined that we shouldn't start taking a telescope and looking closely at indigenous cultures in isolation from the relationship with the global system that has impacted on indigenous cultures and I think similarly in this workshop we must do the same because if we do not address the power relations that are affecting and transforming food systems then we will not adequately address the needed changes and support to support indigenous food systems because it is only more recently that the full impacts of industrial agriculture have become better understood as systemic drivers of biodiversity laws, climate change and gross social inequality and the current pandemic highlights the vulnerability of global food change pointing to transitions from carbon intensive food production and consumption patterns towards more resilient and sustainable local food systems. So I will look at some of the food systems that I'm a bit more familiar with for example in my home region in the Cordillera Philippines systems based on agroforestry for example shifting cultivation or rotational farming linked with terrorist agriculture and also home gardens because these are some local food systems which are common to many indigenous peoples in Asia. So taking for example rotation agriculture or sweden farming in fact from the beginning of highland development interventions by government this is true in the Philippines it's true in Thailand there has been a misconception of rotational farming as the cause of deforestation and that is a view coming from scientific forestry right and so the policy has been to replace rotational farming with sedentary farming emphasizing commercial crop production. Moreover forestry laws do not recognize indigenous peoples living in forested or protected areas even when our residential homes and farmlands have been occupying these spaces or we have been living in these lands over long periods. So catch crops have been promoted supported by government projects and private business. However for example in Thailand rotational farming still exists in around 50% of the current communities right and more recently a cabinet resolution covering livelihoods recognizes the traditional and dynamic practice of agriculture and its coexistence with the natural ecosystem. So this resolution cabinet resolution promulgates special cultural zones for the revival and maintenance of cultural identity in harmony with nature and this recognition of rotation agriculture has strengthened the local economy some young people now see their communities as their place for growth and innovation reclaiming livelihoods with cultural identity. So this will be an important area to look at because it requires more research the excellent research already done on rotational farming in Thailand but across Asia this was also supported with research with FAO has shown that this continues to be a major significant way of indigenous food systems supporting genetic diversity and traditional foods and if that decline continues this will be a serious problem across countries in Asia. We can look at the features of rotation farming further in yeah in this workshop. Now I look at some features of Therese rice agriculture so the central Cordillera region and its Therese rice agriculture it's also practiced actually in many mountain areas in Asia and particularly the Ifugao rice Therese in the Cordillera has been recognized as a living cultural heritage. Right now if we look at this rice Therese as a whole food system in fact they are very ingenious technological system of rice fields supported by sophisticated irrigation and water management systems and associated cultural values social institutions and spiritual link to to nature right so this is not just production of food within the Therese it combines actually forest water and land management across the landscape it uses sophisticated indigenous technology knowledge and institutions and within the landscape it really contains multiple values for example for governments and for outsiders it has massive tourism values and they focus for example on the Therese. However for a lot of the farmers the larger values are in the management of the water system and the forested area above the rice fields which maintains water and good ecosystem functions within that landscape of course it has enormous heritage and ecosystem values water and carbon management of course a subsistence and food values and traditional occupations not just as rice farmers but as wood carvers weavers basketry and a whole range of other traditional occupations. Now again linking to the bigger system the green revolution has introduced changes in the use of hybrid seeds and today a lot of those best varieties are now in the seed banks and it's great that the potato park has been able to achieve a reputation we still have a lot of heritage rice varieties but now a lot of the rice is marketed to the urban centers and niche markets abroad and we are in a bad situation we're in local people are actually buying the cheaper rice and selling their best rice so here again the economic imbalance in support for our rural food systems needs to be looked at so that the good benefits are also retained while contributing to for example supply chains or outside markets. Let's also look at urban transitions for example for indigenous peoples most of whom live in Asia right we still have 72 percent more or less in the rural areas whereas in some regions like in North America and Latin America we are now having more indigenous peoples living in urban areas which means that issues of food systems of indigenous peoples also in the urban areas needs to be looked at. Now there is still good urban rural interlinkages in our food systems for example during the pandemic the rural areas were actually supplying food to indigenous peoples in the urban areas who were suffering food shortages because of the breakdown say in food chains or because of affordability and accessibility right so for example here in Baguio City where I'm from one of the strongest traditional food systems were the home gardens these are close to the houses were in wild and domesticated food crops as well as animals are kept nearby and this has been actual enhancement of genetic diversity because these home gardens have been found to be sometimes richer in diversity than even in some of the forest the forest areas right because of also the exchange and experimentation that is done by indigenous peoples and I was able to visit for example the home gardens in Kendi in Sri Lanka and here every home is really surrounded by a lot of biodiversity and plants and animals that are used for medicine for food for exchange and for strengthening the security of the of the families but because of the high value crops that are planted there they're also the suppliers of nutmeg and other spices to near and distant markets and these home gardens are continued to be quite important so I think we need to see this transition period as a great opportunity because there is now an openness to really explore diversity as a very important element of the food systems for the future local resilient and yeah diverse and I think by hearing more and educating and researching these food systems then we can make an important contribution to better food systems in the future thank you thank you so much Joji you're so knowledgeable and I really appreciate your presentation was brilliant thank you so much and I you know the context of where we are at the moment with food systems this huge inequalities in power between agribusiness and you know small farmers and indigenous farmers are really at the core of these issues that are threatening indigenous food systems and as you also highlighted you know markets are also really important needing to be better supporting indigenous foods and it was really interesting to hear about the wild and the domesticated genetic resources enriching each other in the home gardens so thank you so much I think unfortunately we probably don't have time for a Q&A now I think we're going to have to just keep going so sorry about that but we'll have time for a Q&A after the next two presentations so could I ask now Simon Mitambo please from he's going to speak about indigenous food systems in Africa and Kenya and just for a quick introduction um so Simon is a an initiated African leader of the Taraka tribe in Kenya and he works with the African biodiversity network as a regional programs coordinator thank you please go ahead Simon yeah thank you Christina and uh I I greet everyone like you have seen my name is Simon I think for for me looking at this subject of indigenous food systems I was I was trying to look at how the way as indigenous people also understand this because there are many definitions but I see it as an area where we have a number of certain elements that are a bit of nature and the culture that have sustained the wave of life among the indigenous people and some of these have been crops livestock issues around land the sacred natural sites soil and so many things and the water and I want also to say that when we discuss this issue of indigenous food system for me and for for us here in Africa I find that we cannot talk about food without talking about seed because seed is the the critical is there is the core in in in our production of food in also carrying our identity because when you talk about seed you find in seed there is sacredness around what we are speaking about so I think most of the my discussion and presentation I will be mostly referring to seed and because of course without seed we we do not have food without seed also we we don't have our cultural identity and seed is also very critical in in giving us our cultural identity governance and the issues of spirituality for example if you come to the raka today the kind of food you eat there will make you feel that you are in another raka and you are not somewhere else in Benin for example so that by self gives people our cultural identity and of course there are traditions and practices around how that food is prepared and how that food is also served and that food is also not eaten by the members of the family who are live alone you will find that sometimes the communities will have to pull elevations also to bring that oristic so in sense it gives us the identity it then gives us the the spiritual perspective because again we will find that also when you go to communities across Africa there are certain ceremonies they might want to do and they can't also do these ceremonies without a particular seed so it becomes very important within their indigenous food system to be able also to identify in different scenes either for nutritional value either for ceremonial value and for many other purposes in terms of being able to be resilient in their in their in their way of life and again it's also very important to realize that it has to be that particular seed and most of the ceremonies you will find that they will not use a foreign seed so the whole issue of genetically modified for them is not an issue because it's not their seed they don't know it the ancestors don't know it they know the color they know all that that they need to do and also in the indigenous communities of Africa you find that seed seed drives the day-to-day activities if we are beginning to wake up and to go to farm or to do the weeding there are some things that cannot take off before we do something so that we get better relationship with our land with our farms it's just like when we are preparing for example to plant there are certain ratios that have to happen if we know that the rain is going to come there are ways that we cleanse the land and so that we receive the gift of nature which is rain so you find in most cases when it is a season where the rain is going to come there is a very particular way that we prepare our grounds and the seed plays a very critical role and looking at the resilience again you find that most of the work that revolve around our indigenous food system and around the seed are usually collective and in the sense they bring cohesion and integration among the members of the community I was also looking at the the way seed also played the role in the new COVID disease when COVID disease was decreed and came here in Africa the fear about the disease was more than even the effect of the disease itself so by doing the ratios that the communities did that alone helped them to come together and to be there for one another and that also helped them to manage the whole effect of the COVID or any other pandemic and these have been part of the practices around seed that bring the cohesion and resilience among these communities and also another feature that is also very important when we discuss our indigenous food system and also seeds we find that seeds like here in my community for example is actually shared and it is not sold and they have a difference between seed and the food and the elder say these days we don't even plant seed we plant food because when you go to the market to buy food is what you come and plant there is a way seed is generated either by way of selection and there are different processes that go around that so in a nutshell I think that gives you a sense of how we look at the seed the features and the perspective that we have here in Africa looking at also the trends what I find is that there is a big loss especially here in Africa because again due to colonization we have been introduced to a lot of technologies and some of the laws that we inherited are the colonial laws and some of these laws also continue to deprive us of our indigenous food system and you find the such laws that really undermine the promote patenting of the seed and you see seeing the supposed to be owned collectively and there is a lot of push for ibrins just like Georgie was saying of course with the green revolution here in Africa that those effect of continuing the government at the national level at the county level here in Kenya and across other parts of Africa really in the push of these ibrins and we know the effect of the ibrins and the chemicals how they do to our soils how they do to our water and also Africa is synonymous also with the corruption and we have also cases where some of the some of the laws cannot also happen because there is a lot of antitwisting between the government officials and the multinationals and at the same time also you find that in situations where we have any competence institutions it becomes also difficult to implement even the few laws that are that are promoted to to our indigenous food system and save for the lifestyle diseases that I imagine and the pandemics like corona we have also seen literally that there has been any precedent and revival of our indigenous food system and the value now is slowly finding their way whether with the policy or without the policy we find that everyone now is embracing is asking for these traditional foods and things like that and another important point to notice also that there is an emerging in the rural Africa there is an emerging leadership of women because again here in Africa women are the experts of the seed so they are able to assert themselves they are able they are the acquittal eco retreat they are able to lead to read the climate to read the ecosystem and also be able to understand the need the the cycles of nature and when it comes to seed enhancing for example they're able to say this is the right season to plant this crop this is not the right season to do this uh sorry and so just to to end up now what we are doing with all these challenges of policy at the corruption uh we're engaging communities with the community dialogues and actually learning and we are also doing maps and the corridors to be able to understand these cycles and also to support community research and also working with the western trained scientists who can understand the language of the farmers and you can support them in their research thank you very much thank you so much Simon Matambo that's great to have that focus on seeds and the collective ownership and all these features which are really core of many indigenous food systems in Africa and also across the world um I think we need to move on to um we're now going to look at the role of indigenous food systems in health and nutrition and we're very happy to have Harriet Kunlein who's prepared a video because it's very very early for her so um uh just to briefly introduce Harriet is a professor and a nutritionist and a founding director at the Center for Indigenous People's Nutrition and Environment in McGill University in Montreal so Harriet I think you're there but we we have a video to present um is that right well hello and good morning to everyone and thank you for having me as a participant in this really interesting session I'm going to start with giving you a little bit of background uh in my work with indigenous peoples I am a nutritionist and a dietitian by academic training at the undergraduate level and then through to nutritional sciences at the PhD level and my first work was with the desert environment in Arizona with the Hopi people and then following my appointment as an assistant professor at British Columbia University of DC I worked with the New Hawk Nation people uh for more than 10 years really before moving on to McGill University in Montreal Canada where I eventually became the founding director of the Center for Indigenous People's Nutrition and Environment and a professor in the School of Human Nutrition so during that time I worked for many years oh 10 15 years in the Canadian Arctic with First Nations and Inuit communities and this was uh conducted in very close collaboration with the Canadian Indigenous leaders which gave a lot of guiding advice on how to do good community consultations and they assisted with that so the work was was very successful and we studied the benefits and risks of traditional food system use in the Arctic there were several concerns at that time about organochlorine and heavy metal contaminants and the government as well as the indigenous communities wanted to thoroughly research the indigenous people's food systems now following that work then I worked with FAO and the nutrition division actually I was on sabbatical leave and worked in collaboration with the nutrition division still as a McGill professor and over about 25 years you can tell I'm getting up there so about 25 years working with cultures in different parts of the world rural cultures of indigenous peoples on their food systems now I am an American professor living in Anacortes Washington state in the United States in the Coast Salish and Samish territories so that gives you some kind of a understanding of the extent of work I've done with indigenous peoples and I want to call your attention to the fact that indigenous peoples health and nutrition you need to think about four essential aspects of health that all indigenous peoples attend to and that we that's and I also had to pay attention to the physical aspects which we often focus on as nutrition as the spiritual social and mental intellectual aspects so all of these have to be taken into account when you're working on food systems with indigenous peoples our sustained research focus was on diversity in the food systems and on the nutrient composition and this was because our perspective was that if you want to do if you want to work with indigenous peoples on health promotion and nutrition you really need to know what you're working with you have to understand the food system the diversity and the composition projecting nutrition and with that information then you can build the health promotion conversation when documenting and promoting food systems for health and well-being you also have to keep in mind that indigenous peoples everywhere have a dichotomy of what they're eating they have their traditional foods and they have commercial foods and it is in in different proportions depending on their particular stage of development their economics and so forth so when you're working with dietary data you have to think about separating you get your data and you separate it according to days with and days without traditional food and that gives you a clear picture then of what species are being used what nutrients are contained in the diet and so forth in the Arctic example 45 communities is for first nations and anyway as I mentioned when that dichotomy was conducted in the research setting there was significantly more protein and other and other nutrients such as minerals and vitamins that were contained in the days that contain at least one serving of traditional food not the whole diet but at least one serving in contrast to days without traditional food so significantly more protein and many nutrients in those days with traditional food and keep in mind the Arctic traditional foods are primarily animal-sourced foods on the days without traditional food significantly more energy that sugar and along the way we found many nutrients are caught the surprises because we have thousands of samples into our laboratories at the center in Montreal vitamin C for example with just one small serving of mucktuck which is the outer the outer skin and the blubber of whale you get as much vitamin C as you would in a standard glass of orange juice vitamin A another component that people think of in fruits and vegetables is in plentiful supply when all parts of the animal are being consumed which indigenous cultures do so with our 12 case studies with the FAO experience I mentioned I will mention that all the publications are online are online but we had with collaboration of FAO and our nutritionists in different parts of the world we worked with three North American cultures two South American cultures two in Africa one in the Pacific and four in Asia and so there were many interdisciplinary partners that came on side both at the center in Montreal and in country to do the work so the first step was to develop the methodology for documenting the food systems and this publication is online with FAO as well as the center website in Montreal and it documents five different steps to use in this documentation so once that methodology was created which took you know from start up until we got the publication together it was about four years and then we proceeded with 12 case studies as I mentioned those 12 case studies with this publication which is online the FAO website indigenous people's food systems the many dimensions of culture diversity and environment for nutrition and health so there are 12 chapters there that describe the food systems how and why they are used people's feeling about it and so forth and for example the documentation in Micronesia in the Pacific we found with Dr. Lois Engelberger's collaboration that the karat banana which is the favorite banana of children in that island more two upwards beyond 2,000 micrograms of karatine in contrast to the normal banana that we all eat the Cavendish banana of less than five micrograms this is another one of the surprises the cultural activities as well as the environmental risks were part of the documentation so when we brought our partners together in a in a center in Italy the Bellagio Center uh they they we all agreed okay we have this great information we know it's in our food system we have a good idea of the nutrients but what are we going to do with this information we can't stop there we have to use this information to improve the health of our people so that started the next phase of the FAO collaboration another oh gosh eight years and more until the publication got completed um indigenous people's food systems and well-being interventions and policies for health promotion so this is basically about the strategies to improve food use by um giving information to the local people and employing local staff to help in the conversion to better diets so I think my time is about up and I will close there and thank you very much for your attention great thank you so much Harriet I think that was a video because it's very early for her um great to hear about these issues that I personally have worked a lot less on but I think the really important case um that the fact that indigenous foods are often more nutritious is a really important um case for advocating for their importance as well as their climate resilience so um we have a little bit of time now for any questions um you can you're free to raise your hand but um also use the um participants um uh so the zoom hand raise function if you click on participants you should be able to do it that way and um if we run out of time you can put your question in the chat but please say who it's for thank you so does anybody have any questions uh okay we do have questions okay um I'm forgive me for mispronouncing this but Merush Tak Hi Christina that was perfect pronunciation okay thank you um um and thanks for the time for all the all the speakers today it's really interesting to hear from everyone um and particularly interesting to hear about how colonial laws for example have you know shape um contemporary times um and then still are shaping them um my question is not a particular any one speaker but I wanted perhaps hear from anyone who might have um dealt with or experienced um um perhaps um contradiction or like a barriers to policy making when it comes to indigenous food systems and traditional food systems with with state actors um particularly I mean I guess there are there are some contradictions or barriers with private sector but like input sometimes these barriers can also um um be placed by um national governments or local governments and I was wondering if um there were any experiences that our speakers or perhaps even like the participants have uh had where where that um that the contradiction comes into place so it's relates to power relationships I guess in in those spaces um uh so yeah I would like to hear more if if there were any experiences people wanted to share so your question relates to how to overcome these power inequalities to promote indigenous food systems in policy yes spaces okay much better described than I did okay so um that's a very good question would any of the speakers like to answer that possibly um well anybody Joji has a hand up would you like to answer that Joji please go ahead uh yes in relation to uh quite a dominant food system rotational farming in Asia government policy actually um criminalizes this activity so not only do we not have a secure land tenure over forested lands uh the practice of rotational farming which does use uh burning and moving across the landscape and leaving the lands follow over a certain period means that for example we have uh indigenous farmers who are imprisoned in Thailand because uh they have very heavy fines for practicing uh rotation farming so uh the policy barriers there are lack of uh tenure security over our lands because uh a lot of the forests are are designated as forest lands where they prohibit this practice so the law will also need to change not only to respect indigenous peoples but to um enable customary resource use and management as in fact a good way of managing the landscape and I think that recognition of the special cultural zones in Thailand is at least a movement towards that thank you right thank you Joji and so we have another question from Frank Roy please go ahead Frank thank you very much Joji there for that explanation and also for the other panelists I just have one simple question uh regarding Simon Mutango made an interesting remark about the seed cultures and how it helped to manage COVID-19 I didn't quite uh get that point so I'll be grateful if he can either speak or give her a response to that for my education thank you thank you for the for the question um but what I was saying is that I was talking about the the role that the seed ceremonies play in bringing uh communities together uh in times of pandemics and uh you know when they perform these ceremonies is is a collective uh affair of everyone participating and coming together uh physically, spiritually, and psychologically and so uh what I was saying is that uh when they did these these ratios again there are certain elements that also go with some of these ceremonies like uh ceremonies of social safeguard and uh some some some abstinence so uh simply what I was what I was saying is that when community come together in times of pandemic or other threat uh for these ceremonies they feel that in belonging and that collective uh inclusivity in facing the challenges that are facing them so I was looking at it like uh another level where they come together uh to to to have that inclusive and a collective uh undertaking of something that threatened them so that traditional seeds bring them together through these ceremonies yeah bring them together so there's social resilience yeah and I was even talking about how the COVID in particular was communicated to Africa especially in the rural there was a lot of fear I said there was more fear about the disease than even the effect of it so that every moment you are feeling like you are sick you see because of that fear and but when they come together for such a collective undertaking it removes the fear and brings collective responsibility and uh care taking upon each other thank you very much Simon so I have some questions in the chat uh one from Harriet Deacon for any panelist what are the potential risks and benefits of commercializing traditional foods in terms of their value to and use by indigenous communities um perhaps um Shoji could address that one um as I think you touched on that issue of commercialization or anybody else is free to if they would like yeah um maybe I'll expand a little bit on uh this heritage rice so indeed the highland rice in the Cordillera several kinds the red the black they all have different flavors and uses uh the government uh department of trade introduced program called heritage rice and they set certain standards for the production of that rice right and it was meant for export to niche markets in the United States with relatively high prices and so many communities that were brought into this program started selling their best rice for the market right and uh we're buying cheaper rice coming from the outside for their own food so of course this uh rice is not yet produced in large quantities therefore there was a displacement of who uh got and ate this but then it had another impact which was when they realized that this rice had um high prices they started planting wide areas for this rice whereas we used to have more sake of rice varieties in different elevations then they started uh mass producing this and um in fact starting to reduce diversity it was in fact heritage varieties that were now being uh planted in big quantities so that they could sell them then there were additional impacts because this is uh traditionally pounded and then when they started setting standards for what would be sold they didn't want to accept rice which had which was sometimes broken or you know which didn't look all exactly the same and after bringing their um rice to the centers for trade sometimes they would be turned back and would the rice wouldn't be bought right so there are many um aspects around commercialization and market um values that need to be examined vis-a-vis the traditional and even the nutritional needs of communities uh it does show a great need for um access to the market right but uh this uh if not done properly can have a lot of unintended impacts which are not attended to by those who are focusing on productivity or sales thank you so much I think we're nearly out of time but obviously the commercialization issue raises a lot of you know difficulty potential adverse impacts that need to be done looked at very carefully um just finally um there's a comment in the chat from Roger Blench what about cassava this is about as un-nutrious as possible from the amazon but dominant in west central africa so yes um it has become that in maize we have a a response from Raj Puri um in the chat box cassava is a calorie rich vegetable that contains plenty of carbohydrate and key vitamins and minerals cassava is a good source of vitamin C thiamine riboflavin and niacin the leaves which are also edible if a person cooks them or drives them in the sun can contain up to 25 percent of protein so I think you've you've had that exchange I've I've read the answer um I'm afraid we'll run out of time now so thank you so much to all the speakers and to all the participants and we have one hand raised I'm so sorry I didn't see you on there very quickly please because we've run out of time I wanted to to touch upon the first question in the in the questions and answer and um that is the the challenge of putting together policies within the dominant um culture right now I think that's something crucial and where we need a collective effort from all of us um the first one is probably there's need for new metrics and new terminology if we looked at them at the metrics um uh and concepts relating to food is mainly uh a bonus in and pricing quantities versus quality I think Harry talked about for example the micro nutrient content of of certain foods and sometimes these foods are ugly in terms of appearance therefore they don't have a market price or they don't have a market value like Joji was talking about the broken uh rice that's being processed traditionally this is a major loss for humanity and for all of us the second one is we need to grow the food base with the presence dominance of three crops that are feeding humanity is very unlikely that we are going to have sustainable food systems and the the other thing very important is challenging uh what the scientists tell us I remember when I grew up we we never knew any oil other than olive oil then there was a huge campaign telling us that olive oil was very bad for cholesterol and we had to consume uh sunflower oil and we found out later that there were very important lobbies behind these chains of habits and it was basically economically driven and it had no health implications whatsoever many of the indigenous peoples and indigenous nations they live across uh borders and that's a major issue when you put together policies to support uh indigenous food systems or indigenous peoples we don't have an understanding neither scientists nor the UN of uh mobile livelihoods and I think Joji was explaining that very well we tend to disregard or not fully understand the benefits of mobile livelihoods from nomadic people to shifting cultivation and when you look at the policies and uh and framework in place to support mobile livelihoods is negligible when we have almost a billion people that depend of mobile livelihoods all over the world from mobile uh pastoralists to indigenous peoples that practice shifting cultivation so all of these are things that we need to incorporate into our research and we need to expand our conceptual framework thank you so much thank you so much for highlighting those really important points I think I've heard we need more research on indigenous peoples food systems with and supporting indigenous researchers themselves and we need um to ensure that research is very much rooted in the wider context the policies the political economy the power inequalities um that need to shift and as part of that shifting metrics what is measured not just quantities of food but quality of food so on that I hope it's been useful for you I've learned a huge amount thank you so much and we'll be back at um well in now um 25 minutes for an in-depth immersive session uh to the Andes so we're going to Latin America um so 1300 British summertime I hope you can all join and have some time for some delicious indigenous foods for your lunch thank you very much and see you later bye