This website presents the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations LinKS Project, which explored the linkages between the crucial issues of local knowledge systems, gender roles and relationships, food provision, and the conservation and management of agrobiodiversity (the various biological resources that are important for food and agriculture and on which many people’s food and livelihood security depends).
The project worked with a diverse range of local institutions – both governmental and non-governmental. It sought to help development practitioners recognise that farmers have knowledge, practices and skills that are often highly sustainable and respectful of the natural ecosystems they depend on for their food and livelihoods; and that rural men and women have different knowledge about how to use and manage genetic resources that is derived from their different roles and responsibilities in the farming system.
The LinKS project focused on three main key activity areas: capacity building and training, research, communication and advocacy. It operated in four countries: Mozambique, Tanzania, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.
The website includes a variety of resources (in English and Portuguese) from the country-level including research outputs, case studies, field reports, seminars and workshop reports, and training courses. It also includes profiles of organisations that are actively working on community based genetic resource management, local knowledge, gender issues, policy issues related to biodiversity, research, and other topics. There is also a bibliography of existing literature on the subjects covered from Tanzania, Mozambique and Swaziland available.
And finally, it includes links to websites focusing on food security issues, both in general, and on specific themes, such as gender, genetics, and intellectual property rights