Agriculture & Food Heritage

The Agriculture & Food Heritage Thematic Group is concerned with sustainable traditional wetland agricultural knowledge and practices, as well as with long-established sustainable water and wetland management systems and food cultures related to wetlands.

The Thematic Group’s main aims are:

• Collating information on cultural aspects of food and agriculture, including traditional knowledge and practices (including case studies) relating to wetlands.

• Developing ‘lessons learned’ concerning cultural aspects of food and agriculture relating to wetlands, including suggestions on how these could be integrated into the Convention’s policy and practice, and in turn how wetland-related perspectives could be integrated into relevant fields of cultural policy and practice. 

Agriculture & Food Heritage Lead - Parviz Koohafkhan

Dr. Parviz Koohafkan is the Founder and President of the World Agricultural Heritage Foundation.

He conceptualized and launched on behalf of FAO, the UN Partnership Initiative on “Conservation and Adaptive Management of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS)” during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg South Africa (WSSD, 2002) and promoted the recognition by FAO, and dynamic conservation of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) in many countries around the world. He is currently Senior Advisor in Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Bioversity International (formerly IPGRI) in Rome, Italy, and the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) in Kyoto, Japan. 

Dr. Koohafkan has an Engineering degree in Agronomy and Natural Resources Management from University of Teheran, Iran and a Masters degree and Ph.D. in Applied Ecology from the University of Sciences and Techniques of Montpellier, France. His fields of specialization are sustainable agriculture and rural development; integrated natural resources management; biodiversity and genetic resources sustainable livelihoods and climate change adaptation and mitigation.  

He held several senior positions in the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO) including the positions of Director of Land and Water Division, Director of the Climate Change and Bio-energy Division, and the Director of Rural Development Division in the Sustainable Development Department and was the FAO focal point for Rio Summit from 1992 to 2012.

With Persian as his mother tongue, he is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Italian and is the author of several books and publications on biodiversity, agro-ecology, natural resources management, climate change and sustainable development.