Skip to main content
Knowledge4Policy
KNOWLEDGE FOR POLICY

Supporting policy with scientific evidence

We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.

Publication | 2021

Indigenous Peoples’ food systems - Insights on sustainability and resilience from the front line of climate change

This publication provides an overview of the common and unique sustainability elements of Indigenous Peoples' food systems, in terms of natural resource management, access to the market, diet diversity, indigenous peoples’ governance systems, and links to traditional knowledge and indigenous languages. While enhancing the learning on Indigenous Peoples food systems, it will raise awareness on the need to enhance the protection of Indigenous Peoples' food systems as a source of livelihood for the 476 million indigenous inhabitants in the world, while contributing to the Zero Hunger Goal.

In addition, the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2025) and the UN Food Systems Summit call on the enhancement of sustainable food systems and on the importance of diversifying diets with nutritious foods, while broadening the existing food base and preserving biodiversity. This is a feature characteristic of Indigenous Peoples' food systems since hundreds of years, which can provide answers to the current debate on sustainable food systems and resilience.

The publication includes eight case studies:

  • hunting, gathering and food sharing in africa’s rainforests
  • voices from arctic nomads: an ancestral food system facing global warming;
  • treasures from shifting cultivation in the himalayan’s evergreen forest;
  • from the oceans to the mountains: storytelling in the pacific islands;
  • surviving in the desert: the resilience of the nomadic herders;
  • ancestral nomadism and farming in the mountains;
  • following the flooding cycles in the amazon rainforest; and
  • following the flooding cycles in the amazon rainforest.

These case studies reveal four salient characteristics across Indigenous Peoples’ food systems:

  • Indigenous Peoples preserve and enrich their ecosystems through their food systems;
  •  Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are resilient and adaptive;
  • Indigenous Peoples’ food systems can broaden the existing food base with nutritious foods;
  • Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are interdependent with language, traditional knowledge, governance and cultural heritage.

The publications makes a number of policy recommendations in relation to:

  • rights to land, territories, natural resources and nomadism;
  • biodiversity, multifunctionality of the systems and self-sufficiency;
  • continuity of traditional practices, adaptation and innovation;
  • governance, free, prior and informed consent, and development programmes;
  • youth, education systems, interculturality, indigenous languages and traditional knowledge;
  • globalization, income, barter, trade, processed foods, waste