Following the “Agro-Ecological – Biodiversity – Climate – Balkans” project and the encounters of Skopje, we started this summer the Agro-Ecological Territories for Climate Action. This action is carrying out with Climate Awareness Association (CAA) in Kosovo and Zeleno Doba (Center for Sustainable Growth and Development Green Age) in Serbia.
Our objectives are (i) to animate the ABC – Balkans plateform, the Regional network, by continuing the virtual seminar, (ii) to build and test a climate/biodiversity awareness training for “territorial mediators” relevant for each territory, (iii) to run the climate/ biodiversity awareness training for Agroecology territories in the 6 Western Balkan countries.
CAA will manage the training in Kosovo, Albania and North Macedonia, and Zeleno Doba in Serbia, Bosnia-and-Herzegovina and Montenegro. This climate/biodiversity tool will be in open access, and the aim is for territorial mediators to appropriate it and could spread it widely in the agro-ecological territories of the Balkans.
Agroecology Territories for Climate Action in Western Balkan Candidates Countries.
Climate change (CC) and biodiversity loss (BD) are bundled issues and one of the major problem of the environmental global challenge is to deal with both at the same time. This only can be done at the level of specific territories, that includes management of natural resources and agrifood systems, generally within common institutional framework. The objective of this action was, in the six candidate Western Balkan Countries, to identify and network actors in a position to carry agri-environmental alternatives strategies, dealing the CC/BD nexus both analytically and situationally. The six national cases were investigated through a collective discussion toward a common vision with a regional Balkan scope and in the framework of the processes of accession to the European Union. It was therefore a question of building a space for discussion and coordination to define for the Balkan region an integration path adapted to the European Green Deal and in particular its “Farm to Fork” and “Biodiversity” dimensions.
After being part of the AgroParisTech collective training course in 2023 on the four main karst poljes of Canton 10 in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Livanjsko, Glamočko Kupreško, Duvanjsko), AIDA is back on this site!
The support will be methodological and analytical inside the Gingko research project financed by the (French) National Agency for Research (ANR) “Geographical indications as common knowledge. Reassessment of current models of regulation and collective action in the context of agroecological transitions ». Claire Bernard-Mongin (CIRAD) has chosen this Bosnian case for the project on our initiative, territory which houses a dynamic GI made visible by the work of the APT internship: the Livanjski Sir.
Aida, via Orianne Crouteix and François Lerin, offers to be a facilitator and to participate in the supervision of the 6-months internship for a pair of students from Institut Agro Montpellier (see the Master internship offer below), which will be associate a Bosnian student; to provide the Enquiry and landscape analysis data in its possession; to participate in the restitution of this survey to local and national Bosnian actors; as well as a reflection on the potential mechanisms for protecting these remarkable landscapes & morpho-pedological structures – and also the livestock breeding pastoral activities which in part, shape them.
The internship offer:
Photo (banner) : Glamočko Polje (Bosnia & Herzegovina), 2023 / François Lerin.
AIDA is taking part in a collective internship organised by AgroParisTech Montpellier as part of the specialised Master’s degree ‘Forest, Nature & Society’ . 16 French students, accompanied by four Bosnian students from the University of Sarajevo, had the task, during three weeks in the field (from 27 February to 17 March 2023), of drawing up a territorial-environmental diagnosis of the “poljes” (closed plains) of district 10 in southern BiH. They were also asked to make a suggestion on the most effective ‘label’ for protecting this hydrographic system of plains in a karstic region that make up a single watershed tiered from 1500 to 700 metres above sea level; and also to highlight possible elements of a management plan for the protection and development of this area.
This project is being carried out in partnership with a Bosnian NGO, the CZZS (Bosnian Centre for the Environment), and in particular its programme entitled “A sustainable future for the freshwater ecosystem of the Livansko polje in Bosnia & Herzegovina”. This programme is funded by the Donors’ Association for Freshwater Ecosystems and implemented jointly with the German grassroots environmental NGO EuroNatur.
In the Peljsac peninsula and the islands of Mljet and Korcula, diagnosis of High Natural Value (HNV) agriculture (March 2017) : Internship Croatia (2017)
Photo (banner) : Glamočko Polje (Bosnia & Herzegovina), 2023 / François Lerin.
On March 2, 2023, the French Association of Pastoralism (AFP) organized in Paris in the premises of the National Assembly the symposium “Pastoralism, a story of the future” on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the implementing decrees of the Pastoral Law in France.
Alice Garnier presented the recent work of the AIDA association on pastoral and land issues in Albania. The return to three pastoral areas (the Has, Rrungaja and Dukat massifs) made it possible to underline that under the apparent unity of the pastoral systems hides a great diversity of situations and dynamics, and varied land issues. It is also an opportunity to present courses of action resulting from European reflections and which could/should be discussed in Albania and throughout the Balkans.
