7th of October, 2024

Introduction: Local dynamics in agro-environmental transitions
Claire Bernard-Mongin (Cirad) mentioned the network’s mission and vision adopted at the Skopje encounters:

“We all recognize the urgency to commit to sustainable transitions in a more holistic way than the silo approach that prevails in public policies. We all come together under the banner of agroecology as a global transformative approach to tackle – holitically and equitably, the climate, food and ecosystemic crisis. »

However, Agro-ecology is only enacted at the scale of territories, which is the very scale of transformative and collective action.

Our network aims to foster Western Balkan Countries connections within the civil society and support collectives/groups of people actively engaged in the recognition of Agro-Ecology territories as alternative and transformative strategies of change.

Agro-ecology Territories are “place where a transition process toward sustainable agriculture and food systems is engaged by different stakeholder groups”. The aim of this network is to explore the different formats of engagement and the tools adapted to the specificity of each context.”

Then Orianne Crouteix explained the importance of territorial approach to understand and act on the nexus biodiversity-climate-food production.

Jimmy Balouzat (AirCoop) introduced the two contributors, Cassiano Luminati from Val Poschiavo (Switzerland) and Pierre Friedrich from CISCA (France). The idea was to show a good example of an agro-ecological territories and to discuss about the position of territorial
mediator.

Cassiano Luminati presented the origins and development of the Val Poschiavo project. He took time to describe the territory and the approach to enroll each actor of the food system (from farmers to restaurants).

Pierre Friedrich after a brief presentation of CISCA, explained the original role taking on the territory: a facilitator or a translator between politics, social-economics actors and scientists.
The aim is to bring actors on social innovation for the transitions.

An initial question from the audience concerned the first step to co-construct an Agro-ecological territory. For Cassiano the scale is the key and it’s crucial to find a common denominator even if each stakeholder explains it differently. Pierre underlined the importance of the scale, not too big, not too small, and to be an expert on social link because it is fundamental to create relationship between actors (not only in a project approach). For Pierre this link should become friendly to co-construct strong transition on the territory.

Another question mentioned extreme events such as the floods in Bosnia-and-Herzegovina at the time of the seminar. Cassiano noted that floods or other extreme events are moment of awareness, and moment where the solidarity in the communities is highlighted. This special moment should be taken as an opportunity to take a change.