The area has been recognized for the ingenuity through which natural resources and human needs have been combined to create livelihoods and mutually sustainable ecosystems.
Even today, olive groves are cultivated with traditional knowledge and practices including the use of different types of terraces, growing technologies and genetic varieties which have been supported by local communities for many centuries. This area also demonstrates remarkable landscape of olive trees which have been formed by farmers' long term interaction with nature.
The GIAHS register highlights unique ways that rural communities have over generations farmed in harmony with nature to create mutually sustainable livelihoods and ecosystems, and often produced remarkable landscapes in the process.
FAO's selection criteria includes that sites be of global importance, have value as a public good in terms of supporting food and livelihood security, agro-biodiversity, knowledge systems, adapted technologies, and culture, and have outstanding landscapes.
Evidence suggests that GIAHS designation can help conserve valuable elements of the sites while boosting demand and prices for the agricultural products, as well as encouraging tourism and jobs growth.
The two new additions bring the total number of sites on the list to 52 in 21 countries.
Other remarkable landscapes already recognized include Hani rice terraces in China, the Massai pastoral system in Kenya and Tanzania, the Ghout oasis system in Algeria, wasabi production in Japan, Spain's salt production in Salinas de Añana, Portugal's agro-sylvo-pastoral system in Barroso, and farmland in Mexico's Chinampas that relies on oral transmission of traditional farming techniques dating back to the Aztec civilization.
Isaac Oyimah/GEE
... Linking agrobiz, sustainable environs, people & technology
