From Lessons to Practice and Impact: Scaling up pathways in peoples’ biodiversity management

This briefing note outlines the results of a three-year programme titled 'Putting lessons into practice: Scaling up People/s Biodiversity Management for Food Security', implemented by Oxfam Novib and the International Fund for Agricultural Development in Peru, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. The programme aimed to strengthen the rights and technical capacities of indigenous peoples and smallholder farmers regarding the sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food security.

• The programme developed an overarching framework of six interconnected pathways to scale up innovation and capacity for indigenous peoples and smallholder farmers: a Participatory Toolkit for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (PGRFA) to measure progress; a simple, adaptable Farmer Field School (FFS) curriculum; efforts to facilitate PGRFA access to remove barriers to farmer-managed seed systems; collective policy analysis and advocacy; climate change response as a cross-cutting issue; and gender inclusion to address the division of labour and access to PGRFA.
• In Zimbabwe, a multi-stakeholder workshop led to the creation of the Seed Security Network Dialogue Initiative, which is tasked with reviewing national seed policy and existing seed laws using an integrated seed system approach.
• The briefing provides eleven policy recommendations, which include increasing the decision-making and technical capacity of smallholder farmers and indigenous peoples, promoting the sharing of best practices, and facilitating dialogue between smallholder producers and public sector breeding institutions. It also suggests establishing community-to-community exchanges for biodiversity and requiring Intellectual Property Rights holders of short-duration crop strains to provide varieties to smallholder producers for breeding at no cost.

APA

Climate and Development Knowledge Network (2015). From Lessons to Practice and Impact: Scaling up pathways in peoples’ biodiversity management. https://cdkn.org/resource/from-lessons-to-practice-and-impact-scaling-up-pathways-in-peoples-biodiversity-management

Chicago

Climate and Development Knowledge Network. From Lessons to Practice and Impact: Scaling up pathways in peoples’ biodiversity management. 2015. https://cdkn.org/resource/from-lessons-to-practice-and-impact-scaling-up-pathways-in-peoples-biodiversity-management.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate and Development Knowledge Network |title=From Lessons to Practice and Impact: Scaling up pathways in peoples’ biodiversity management |date=14 October 2015 |url=https://cdkn.org/resource/from-lessons-to-practice-and-impact-scaling-up-pathways-in-peoples-biodiversity-management |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climateanddevelopmentknowledgenetwork2015from, author = {{Climate and Development Knowledge Network}}, title = {{From Lessons to Practice and Impact: Scaling up pathways in peoples’ biodiversity management}}, institution = {Climate and Development Knowledge Network}, year = {2015}, month = oct, url = {https://cdkn.org/resource/from-lessons-to-practice-and-impact-scaling-up-pathways-in-peoples-biodiversity-management}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }