Indigenous knowledge is key to sustainable food systems
- Media Manager
- Jan 10, 2023
- 2 min read
Nature
Written By: Alexandre Antonelli
Published: January 10th, 2023
Agricultural sciences have for too long ignored traditional and local knowledge about crop plants and how best to grow them. That must change if the world is to ensure future food security.
Indigenous peoples and other local communities, who might have lived in a region for thousands or hundreds of years, respectively, have long acted as foragers, growers and shapers of nature1. In many parts of the world, the food production systems developed by such communities — from irrigated crops to agroforestry systems — have been the dominant food systems supporting regional economies, and feeding rural and urban areas alike.
For the past three decades, various efforts involving academic and industrial partners have explored how biodiversity in low- and middle-income countries could be exploited commercially — bioprospected — for new pharmaceuticals and crop varieties, and how benefits could be shared equitably. Yet there are huge power imbalances between the wealthy countries and large corporations seeking the products, and the biodiversity-rich but economically and technologically deprived countries and communities providing them. In practice, the benefits rarely reach the people who are the knowledge holders and guardians of biodiversity and agrobiodiversity.
Today, food production is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss and contributes heavily to climate change and pollution — the three components of the ‘triple planetary crisis’ recognized by the United Nations as requiring resolution if humanity is to create a viable future on this planet. As such, there has never been more need to establish how Indigenous and local knowledge can contribute to the building of resilient, sustainable and nutritious food systems in a way that is equitable.
As others have noted, people from Indigenous and local communities who provide their knowledge to research must be involved from the start, take the lead on projects whenever possible and receive tangible, long-lasting benefits from them. But my work as director of science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London has convinced me that these goals are not enough. (Kew is collaborating with some 400 organizations in more than 100 countries to develop nature-based solutions to food insecurity, biodiversity loss and the effects of climate change.)
Fundamentally, there needs to be a transformation in the way agricultural science — indeed, all of science — is conducted. Assumptions about what counts as legitimate scientific knowledge must be questioned5. A greater appreciation of the wealth of information held as a result of humans living with and using species over hundreds or thousands of years must be developed. And the diverse needs of countries and communities across the world must be much better understood.
