GIAHS CAPACITY BUILDING
Italian cooperation abroad project on the FAO Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS)
Università degli Studi di Firenze CULTLAB
According to FAO Agricultural Heritage Systems are land use systems and landscapes, including cultivated land, forests and pastures, which are rich in globally significant biocultural and biological diversity evolving from the co-adaptation of a community with its environment and its needs and aspirations for sustainable development.
In 2002, FAO launched the idea of a program named Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), to identify and safeguard agricultural sites that have survived using traditional techniques and are still providing many services to the ecosystem, while maintaining landscapes, a huge agrobiodiversity, ancestral knowledge transmitted through generations, and strong cultural and social values.
Today the GIAHS program includes more than 50 agricultural and forest sites across the word. In order to contribute to the program, in collaboration with FAO, CBD and World Bank, the Laboratory for Landscape of the School of Agriculture of the University of Florence set up an International Master Course on Agricultural Heritage that will start in January 2019, as part of a larger national research program supporting GIAHS.
The structure of the master course and the call for applications can be found at: www.agriculturalheritage.com