Project
Identifying context-specific and stakeholder-driven strategies for an agroecological transition
My PhD thesis follows the objective to co-design potential agroecological transition strategies with farmers and other stakeholders in the context of Northern African Living Labs within the EU Horizon project NATAE. A Living Lab is a place of structured exchanges and co-construction of knowledge, in which stakeholders organise the development of innovations in a ‘real-life’ environment.
Background
An agroecological transition of Northern African food system has been suggested as a possible pathway to increase their sustainability and resilience towards climate change, ecosystem degradation and food crises. Agroecology is defined as a scientific discipline, a set of agricultural practices and a social movement aiming at the re-design of food systems based on ecological concepts and human values.
There are no ‘one-fits-all’- recipes and, thus, systemic thinking and transdisciplinary research is needed to design evidence-based and locally-tailored agroecological strategies and to evaluate their performance at various levels of the food system.
Project description
The general aim of NATAE is a transdisciplinary co-development of agroecological food system transition strategies in North Africa. Taking a multi-scale perspective, agroecological strategies in the project include agronomic practices and socio-economic interventions at field and farm scale as well as policy options and value chain re-design options at local up to international levels. The multi-actor consortium of NATAE conducts research in six different Living Labs reflecting the diversity of agroecological zones in North Africa.
My PhD research project is embedded in the NATAE project and will integrate both local and scientific knowledge sources and quantitative and qualitative methods to identify place-based and stakeholder-driven agroecological strategies and to assess their effects on the sustainability and resilience of North African food systems.