Small farmers produce a third of the world’s food and these smallholder farmers not only provide food, but also act as stewards for a diversity of plants, animals and forest on and around their farms (FAO 2021, FSN 2022, IIED 2022 ). China is the world’s biggest smallholder farming country of 200 million farming households, with an average farming area of less than 0.6 hectares. These small farmers and their communities have worked in farmer seed systems to adapt to social and climate change for generations. The community led farmer seeds systems sustain traditional culture, knowledge and genetic diversity  as an important basis for food security, climate resilience and sustainability. However, small farmers and producers are the majority of the poor and hunger population and their genetic resources and knowledge in farmer seed systems need more attention and support!    

This is a comprehensive side event with joint efforts from multiple partners aiming to share our collaboration and local community based action results in biodiversity and agroecology focusing on farmer seed system enhancement for food security, climate adaptation and sustainability.  The side event will share our bio-culture and farmer seed system approches and demonstrate the  mechnismsms and experiences  with difffrent  storites and policy piloting cases in China and in other countries, aiming to contribut to the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’s discussion and decision with the following specific objectives:

• Display the roles and contribution of small holding farmers, indigenous people and communities in farmer seed systems in biodiversity conversation and utilization for addressing the interlinked issues of biodiversity, food and livelihood at grassroot level in the context of Climate Changes in different ecosystems  from Southwestern China, Himalaya-Hindu Kush Mountains, African Zambezi river Valley areas, Andes Mountains to coastal and dryland ecosystems.
• Demonstrate the possible linkages and collaborations between local communities, scientists, local governments, enterprises and other stakeholders via local NGO networks and platform for dialogues and interaction for mutual understanding and joint actions in sustainable conservation and adaptation at local level.
• Further enhance and Build a diversified cross-border platform that includes governments, enterprises, scientific research institutions, social organizations, and communities, and promote multi-stakeholder groups to share the good practices and knowledge. and jointly carry out exchanges and cooperation in farmer seed sysytem enhancement for sustainable biodiversity and traditional knowledge conservation and utilization for the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity targets and SDGs.