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- Examples of dynamic conservation: The case of
the rice-fish culture in China
For more than 5 years of implementation, the GIAHS
site in China has started Longxian village, a rice-fish
culture system. Fish provide nutrition and fertilizer
to rice, regulate microclimatic conditions and eat
larvae and weeds in the flooded fields, reducing the
cost of labour needed for fertilizer and insect control.
The rice-fish culture self-sufficiency production
provides favourable eco-environmental conditions
that are also beneficial to conservation of other crop
species for home gardens of importance to local
food nutrition and diets, i.e. lotus roots, beans, taro,
eggplant, Chinese plums, mulberry and forest tree
species of ethnobotanical and medicinal uses.
However, population emigration and modern
technologies to intensify production are threaten-
ing the rice-fish culture system in the village.
Through the GIAHS initiative, rice-fish practices in
China have made a comeback and given hope to
small farmers. FAO assisted the national and local
institutions to develop and implement an action
plan and a supportive institutional framework.
The local government of Qingtian has internalized
the GIAHS concept and has taken steps forward to
promote the conservation of their agricultural her-
itage. They have issued a temporary legislation to pro-
mote rice-fish conservation and development in 2010.
The Qingtian Bureau of Agriculture, Environmental
Protection, Culture and Tourism has also made
great effort to support and encourage local farmers
to join the conservation programme. Since then,
Longxian village has become popular among
tourists (local and foreign) and the number of vis-
itors has increased more than threefold. GIAHS
have created awareness of conservation in Longx-
ian village in China, because it has helped stake-
holders become aware that multiple goods and
services exist in traditional agricultural sys-
tems. The system provides economic and nutritional
values (healthy food, nutritious rice and fish prod-
ucts), social values (labour occupation), ecological
(rich agricultural biodiversity, clean and healthy
farms and environment), and cultural and ecotourism
values for humanity. Dynamic conservation of GIAHS
has offered many opportunities for socio-economic
and research development, such as: rice-fish sys-
tem for research and education, fish and rice deli-
cacies, aesthetic landscape, old mountain village,
and folk-custom culture.- Summary and way forward for sustainable
agriculture and rural development
Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems
are living, evolving systems of human communities
in an intricate relationship with their territory,
cultural or agricultural landscapes or biophysical
and wider social environment. The humans and
their way of life have continually adapted to the
potentials and constraints of the social-ecological
environments, and shaped the landscapes into
remarkable and aesthetic beauty, accumulated
wealth of knowledge systems and culture, local food
systems and diets, and in the perpetuation of the bi-
ological diversity of global significance. Many GIAHS
and their unique elements are under threats and
facing disappearance due to the penetration of
global commodity driven markets that often create
situations in which local producers or communities
in GIAHS have to compete with agricultural produce
from intensive and often subsidized agriculture in
other areas of the world. All of these threats and
issues pose the risk of loss of unique and globally
significant agricultural biodiversity and associated
knowledge, aesthetic beauty, human culture, and
thereby threatening the livelihood security and food
sovereignty of many rural, traditional and family
farming communities. Moreover, what is not being
realized is that, once these GIAHS unique key ele-
ments are lost, the agricultural legacy and associ-
ated social-ecological and cultural, local and global
benefits will also be lost forever. Therefore, policies
are needed to support dynamic conservation of
agricultural heritage and safeguard it from the neg-
ative external drivers of change. It is likewise impor-
tant to protect the natural and cultural assets of