The GIAHS Initiative promotes a dynamic conservation approach that:

• Allows farmers to nurture and adapt the systems and biodiversity they have developed while  ensuring food security and human well-being;
• Supports protective government policies and incentives while working for in situ conservation of biodiversity and traditional knowledge;
• Recognizes the right to food and the cultural diversity and achievements of local communities and indigenous peoples;
• Crystallizes the need for approaches that integrate the in situ conservation of genetic resources with related traditional knowledge and local institutions for natural resource management, as a way to ensure continuous co-adaptation to a changing physical and socio-economic environment, by strengthening the social-environmental resilience and co-evolutionary balance of agricultural systems.