Government consults custodian communities before crafting a National Strategy

For thousands of years, farmers have carefully grown, saved, and exchanged seeds using knowledge passed from generation to generation. This indigenous knowledge was acquired through observing nature and living in harmony with the laws of nature. Photo: David Brazier

A sub-committee responsible for overseeing the drafting of a National Strategy and Action Plans aimed at promoting the conservation and sustainable use of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (PGRFA) in Zimbabwe has been established 24 days after the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement held a national inception workshop on 27 September 2018 in Harare at the Wild Geese Lodge to initiate discussions that will see Zimbabwe developing the National Strategy.

The sub-committee, which comprises of various stakeholders led by the National Gene bank, has already sat once during the first week of November 2018 to discuss modalities for conducting nation-wide stakeholder consultations from 12 November to 23 November 2018.

“In order to conduct this exercise, the Government is consulting with various stakeholders involved in the conservation, management and use of PGRFA across the country and at various levels,” said Kudzai Kusena, Curator under Zimbabwe’s Genetic Resources and Biotechnology Institute.

Civil society organisations form part of the composition of the sub-committee and the Community Technology Development Trust (CTDT), working closely with the Participatory Ecological Land Use Management-Zimbabwe (PELUM-ZWE) are representing CSOs in the country.

Zimbabwe does not have specific legislative framework addressing PGRFA. This limits the capability of Government and players to promote the conservation of plants essential for food and agriculture, which include commercial crops, landraces, and crop wild relatives and wild plants important for food. It also limits Government from implementing specific provisions under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), especially Article 9 which advances Farmers Rights. However, development of the National Strategy is viewed as a first and critical step.

The objectives of the stakeholder consultation include understanding the status of conversation, management and use of PGRFA at grassroots level, understanding critical challenges undermining conservation, management and use of PGRFA, getting suggestions on how the nation can promote conservation, management and use of PGRFA, and to identify key thematic issues and appropriate monitoring, evaluation and learning system for the National Strategy.

The first draft of the National Strategy and Action Plan for PGRFA is expected to be out by December 2018. PELUM-ZWE hopes that the National Strategy will capture voices of custodian communities, who constitute mainly of smallholder farmers whose governance systems and indigenous knowledge have been used for centuries to protect biocultural diversity throughout Zimbabwe.