Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are intimately tied to the natural world and are capable of providing food and nutritional security, whilst restoring ecosystems and maintaining biodiversity.

This Brief articulates the lessons that can be learned from Indigenous Peoples and advocates for their inclusion on the agenda of the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit.

What is the problem?

Numbering over 476 million worldwide, Indigenous Peoples live across over 90 countries and seven socio-cultural regions. They often reside in sites of rich biodiversity and possess rich biocultural diversity and knowledge that has been preserved for generations. Indigenous Peoples’ food systems emphasise circularity, and comprise many ways of obtaining, preparing, storing and sharing food. Their participation in the drafting and implementation of food policy is crucial to the future continuation of their livelihoods. However, Indigenous Peoples, their food systems, knowledge and practices, have been and continue to be marginalised in policy.

What are the main characteristics of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems?

Compared to specialised, input-intensive systems of conventional food production, Indigenous Peoples generate a diversity of foods with minimal intervention on the ecosystems, are efficient in resource use, with little waste and wide circulation of resources. Material inputs tend to be fully used and recycled locally.

Indigenous Peoples’ lands, waters and resources are often used, managed or governed collectively and equitably as a common resource under community-based management. Indigenous Peoples’ systems of collective ownership of resources and food sharing can thus support inter-and intra-community cooperation, the cultivation and maintenance of shared identities, and healthy, resilient and culturally appropriate food systems.

What can Indigenous Peoples’ food systems bring to the debate?

The sensitive inclusion of Indigenous Peoples’ traditional knowledge in policy will support the sustainable management of natural resources and transformation of food systems for all.

Indigenous Peoples occupy over a quarter of the world’s land and their food systems can help to preserve global biodiversity. There is evidence that lands and forests managed and governed by Indigenous Peoples are able to resist forest loss and experience lower rates of land conversion than forests within protected areas and undefined national forests. Indigenous Peoples’ communities have persisted as custodians of the planet’s food and genetic resources.

Indigenous Peoples’ food systems provide nourishment and healthy diets. Indigenous Peoples’ food systems make use of several hundred species of edible and nutritious flora and fauna, including traditionally cultivated crops, crop wild relatives and animal wildlife. However, Indigenous Peoples’ communities are feeling the effects of the dietary transition, with increasing consumption of highly processed foods a growing public health concern.

What is needed to protect and strengthen Indigenous Peoples’ food systems?

Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are themselves a game-changing solution. The speed at which Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are eroding and Indigenous Peoples’ traditional knowledge systems are disappearing needs urgent actions to guarantee the survival of Indigenous Peoples.

The Brief provides an assessment of the drivers affecting Indigenous Peoples’ food systems and make recommendations for game-changing solutions.

Recommendations for Action Track 1

• Leaving no one behind can only be achieved by the overarching recommendation of engaging indigenous leaders in policy discussions and devising strategies to access safe and nutritious foods. At the global level, inclusion of Indigenous Peoples and recognition of their knowledge in policymaking platforms is necessary;
• The proposed Expand Coverage of Social Protection Systems is essential for Indigenous Peoples;
• Develop new standards and legal frameworks to drive private-sector change and hold companies accountable. This is fundamental to end the situations of displacement, expansion of the agriculture frontier on ecosystems, and pollution and destruction of the environment undertaken by the private sector.

Recommendations for Action Track 2

• Education: Interculturality should become a game changer under Action Track 2, addressing not only current formal education systems, but also policymaking and social awareness about the importance of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems;
• The Food Systems Framework must include recommendations that increase the security of access by Indigenous Peoples to their lands and territories.

Recommendations for Action Track 3

• Proposals to Increase agrobiodiversity for improved production and resilience are key to future nature-positive production where Indigenous Peoples can play a significant role;
• The game-changing solution of consulting and engaging with Indigenous Peoples’ food systems to support conservation and biocentric restoration is central to the sustainable transformation of food systems;
• Scaling-out agroecological production systems and adopting regenerative agricultural practices for resilient landscapes at scale has the potential to conserve and promote nature-positive production where contributions of Indigenous Peoples and farmers are multiple.

Recommendations for Action Track 4

• Securing land tenure rights for resilience and sustainable food systems must be achieved in order to reach the goals of this Action Track;
• The promotion of inclusive and sustainable agroecological networks for small farmers and Indigenous Peoples’ communities is crucial for advancing the equitable livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples.

Recommendations for Action Track 5

• Systemic approaches to risk analysis create an opportunity to incorporate Indigenous Peoples’ perspectives in preventing and monitoring shocks;
• Universal food access: enacting food as public good. This game changer resonates with the way Indigenous Peoples perceive food. To consider food a public good and ensure universal food access, in the case of Indigenous Peoples, relates to secure access rights over their territories, lands and natural resources as recognised in the 2004 Voluntary Guidelines on the Right to Food.