IX. Recommendations

Agrobiodiversity conservation must build upon and strengthen the acknowledged traditional role of women as conservators of knowledge and genetic resources, especially in the context of livelihood uncertainty due to rural-urban migration and greater responsibility of women in small farms. These are suggestive of potential opportunities for supporting and strengthening the role of rural women in agrobiodiversity conservation.

A. Mechanisms for institutional partnerships

Agrobiodiversity conservation must establish institutional partnerships that work both in the field and at policy level.

• Local institutional commitment is vital for collaboration and coordination of activities. This will also ensure sustainability of the programmes even when the original implementers are no longer working in the area. Likewise, finding experts and local collaborators from the region or project area who can work with the people and who understand the socioeconomic and cultural context makes the programme implementation more effective.
• Recognize local capacity, and help train or harness skills for programme involvement. Research and extension activities should enable and empower the stakeholders.
• Establish a link from the community to the NGOs, local governments and other institutions by building the people’s negotiation and language skills, and organize forums as venues for voicing out the needs and problems of the communities.
• At the community level, people’s organizations need mediators to help source and administer funds for agrobiodiversity activities. Counter-parting or sharing of funds and resources should be encouraged to discourage a dole-out mentality among local communities, whilst nurturing a sense of ownership of the project instead. To effectively run projects, flexibility in budgeting is needed. Donor policies should be discussed and strong advocacy for the national government’s allocation for agrobiodiversity conservation programmes should be undertaken.
• Multisectoral partnerships are encouraged, but the terms and conditions should provide a clear path to avoid misunderstandings. These partnerships should be forged between and among institutions, NGOs, local government agencies, researchers, people or communities and scientists.

B. Research, development and extension interventions

• Recognize, reward and support the traditional agrobiodiversity conservation activities of women and men through national legislation; evolve economic incentives for promoting agrobiodiversity conservation.
• Enhance access to local seed resources through community seed banks.
• Chronicle the community-level agrobiodiversity by setting up registers and inventories through partnership with local communities, integrating gender perspectives.
• Identify alternative livelihood enterprises and technologies based on traditional knowledge and practices for women and youth.
• Enhance women’s access to information and technology by empowering them.
• Develop ethical standards for doing research and development work, especially in culturally sensitive areas.
• Support in-situ sustainable livelihood for women, as well as for the young generation.
• Promote agrobiodiversity conservation through community-based education for the youth.
• Enhance gender equity in terms of access to land, genetic resources and information.
• Knowledge is a social construct encoded in the culture and language of each ethnic group. Hence, research and action require a holistic approach for understanding and reinforcing the spiritual and practical values of indigenous practices dealing with the conservation of agrobiodiversity.
• Support farmers’ networks in conducting seed fairs, knowledge and seed/planting material exchanges and cross visits.
• Promote revival of rituals and cultural festivals that encourage agrobiodiversity conservation.
• Adopt ecosystem-based R&D approaches that emphasize agrobiodiversity management of crops, trees, fish and livestock. This is in keeping with the framework set by the Convention on Biodiversity, which encourages conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits.
• Integrate into R&D efforts the conservation and management of the rich cultural heritage and diversity. Opportunities need to be provided especially for those in cultural regions dominated by indigenous people and ethnic minorities.

C. Policy development

• Conduct policy analysis for promoting agrobiodiversity initiatives.
• Support location-specific nutrition and food diversity efforts in achieving human nutrition and conservation promotion goals.
• Establish biosafety regulations to protect agrobiodiversity from gene contamination from genetically modified organisms.
• Recognize traditional cultivars by incorporating women’s knowledge in formal seed laws.
• Support grassroots-level informal institutions to institutionalize the activities.
• Establish an incentive structure, i.e. reducing tax levels to promote agrobiodiversity or green products.
• Evolve gender-sensitive legislation to protect farmers’ rights in addition to breeders’ rights.

D. Networking and capacity building

• Conduct information, education and communication campaigns on biopiracy and other related issues for local communities, NGOs and research institutions.
• Support networking with local institutions and conducting regular training and capacity-building programmes on agrobiodiversity conservation.
• Organize policymakers’ workshops on issues related to agrobiodiversity conservation.
• Develop and pilot-test models of benefit-sharing mechanisms for traditional cultivars/farmer-conserved and -developed varieties.

E. Comments from resource persons

The presentation of recommendations was followed by a plenary discussion during which participants reacted to and proposed suggestions for their finalization and unanimous adoption as consultation output. Providing assistance to this process were two resource persons, namely Arma Bertuso (Ms), a specialist in gender and genetic resources conservation issues from SEARICE; and Arnold Garcia, head of the Natural Resource Management Programme of SEAMEO-SEARCA.

The following are the resource persons’ summarized comments to the group’s synthesis and recommendations:

• The presentation is extensive and comprehensive and touches on the significant issues and problems of agrobiodiversity conservation and the role of women.
• Farmers’ use of high-yielding varieties illustrates a good balance between agrobiodiversity conservation and food security considerations. In countries like Myanmar, addressing the pressing need to produce more food for a starving population while conserving agrobiodiversity promotes a more sustainable development. Technologies to generate more livelihood options should be provided, including infrastructure and other support services such as production loans.
• Women’s contribution to agrobiodiversity conservation must be recognized. Emphasis on gender differentiation and on the contribution of different age groups should not be overlooked as far as community agrobiodiversity conservation efforts are concerned.
• In terms of methods in agrobiodiversity conservation, women’s roles in major and minor crops must be given equal focus in a situational analysis.
• Community organizing for agrobiodiversity conservation should involve households comprised of women, men and children.
• More initiatives on women in participatory plant breeding should be carried out in all participating countries.
• In the conduct of research, institutional partnerships should strengthen gender responsiveness.
• Researchers should not only have the skills and knowledge in agrobiodiversity conservation, but also internalize gender concerns and be able to integrate them into their work.