No images? Click here CAWR Newsletter February 2020 Our monthly newsletters are an easy way to keep up-to-date with new developments at our research centre. From successful project bids to upcoming events, our newsletter informs you on how we are 'driving innovative transdisciplinary research on resilient food and water systems.' NewsUNDERTREES - Creating Knowledge for UNDERsTranding ecosystem seRvicEs of agroforestry systems through a holistic methodological frameworkDr Sara Burbi and Dr Ulrich Schmutz attended the Kick-off Meeting of the H2020 MSCA-RISE Project UNDERTREES Creating Knowledge for UNDERsTranding ecosystem seRvicEs of agroforestry systems through a holistic methodological framework. The meeting took place at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa on the 28th- 29th January in Pisa, Italy. Beneficiaries in attendance include, Universidad de Extremadura, Spain; Agrifood and Biosciences Institute; VEXIZA S.L.; Universidad de Santiago de Compostela and EA Group s.c. Third Country Partners in attendance include, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania Forest Agency, Ministry of Environment and Instituto Autonomo de Investigación Agropecuaria. The project is an international & intersectional network of 15 organisations over 3 continents looking to exchange knowledge & skills on agroforestry and ecosystem services. There will be 16 study sites in 5 Biographical areas within 3 thematic areas:
The Agroecology Fund’s global learning exchange in South IndiaProfessor Michel Pimbert travelled to South India to participate in the Agroecology Fund’s week long global learning exchange which took place on farms in Karnataka and the Fireflies Intercultural Centre – a secular ashram that engages in intercultural dialogues. The local hosts in India were the Amrita Bhoomi Agroecology School and La Via Campesina. Over 100 people from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe participated in this global learning exchange which took place from 3rd to 7th February 2020. Most of the AEF’s members (mainly US Foundations) were represented at the global learning exchange, allowing for fruitful interactions and planning between grantees and donors. Michel represented CAWR as part of the Agroecology for Sustainable Food Systems in Europe collaborative, which is funded by the Agroecology Fund (AEF). He was accompanied by Rupert Dunn from the UK’s Land Workers Alliance (LWA), also part of the same collaborative. Together, Rupert and Michel shared with other participants some of the highlights of the work the LWA and CAWR have been doing over the last four years on agroecological innovations, co-creation of knowledge and codes of research ethics, mapping agroecology initiatives, farmer schools for agroecological learning, and reflections on the Peoples’ Food Policy for the UK and the UK Agricultural Bill post Brexit. Participants were also able to spend 3 days at the Amrita Bhoomi Agroecology Centre in advance of the gathering, from January 31st to February 2. This was an opportunity to spend time in the field and meet with farmers to learn about Indian agroecology, and more specifically about Zero Budget Natural Farming which is led by farmer groups in Karnataka. There was also an opportunity to interact with ZBNF farmers in Andhra Pradesh where the government seeks to scale up this approach throughout the State. The focus on ZBNF allowed participants to explore the challenges of scaling up this agroecological approach in different contexts. Overall, this was a rich intercultural dialogue on agroecology. The CAWR Newsletter will share the AEF’s report on this global learning exchange when it becomes available later this year. New E-Learning Course: Introduction to the global governance of food and agriculture from a sovereignty perspectiveWant to know more about food policy/governance in the United Nations (e.g. Committee on World Food Security (CFS), FAO, UN Human Right Council, etc)? Curious about how Food Sovereignty relates to these institutions? Then check out this free e-course. Our collaborators Schola Campesina have just launched this new e-learning course on the global governance of food. Fruit/Food DialogueAlex Atala and Humberto From 24th - 26th January 2020, the renowned Brazilian Chefs Felipe Ribemboin and Alex Atala, together with the environmentalist Beto Ricardo (a Goldman Environmental Prize winner 1992) organised the third International Conference on Fruit/ Food Dialogue. Three hundred guests from all over the world were invited to Sao Paulo to discuss alternatives that can change food systems from different perspectives. Humberto Rios Labrada was invited to give one of the lectures entitled: Crisis and Solutions: Agroecology and Climate. The impressive presentations and discussions as well as the positive atmosphere in general all gave hope for a more sustainable life on the planet. All presentations will be displayed shortly on the web Fruit/Food Dialogue. Humberto (Goldman Prize winner 2010) and Beto Ricardo (Goldman Prize winner 1992) Governance of natural resources - where are the voices of women and the youth?Dr. Stefanie Lemke was invited as guest presenter at the Seminar Series, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, on 27th January 2020. This presentation builds on a participatory collaborative project developed with CAWR colleagues Dr. Priscilla Claeys and Dr. Stefania Errico, conducted with civil society and academic partners in West and East Africa in 2018 and 2019, exploring challenges, opportunities and collective struggles in advancing an alternative framework for the governance of natural resources, grounded in food sovereignty. While there have been advances regarding the legal recognition and protection of collective rights to resources, huge challenges remain, such as elite capture, the privatisation and selling of communal land, tenure insecurity and the marginalisation of certain groups - among them pastoralists, smallholder famers, Indigenous Peoples, especially women and the youth among them. This is leading to conflicts within families and between generations, as well as between different groups of actors, both among local resource users and with external actors. This project found that despite growing attention to ensuring women’s individual access to land, one of the most pressing challenges is ensuring their full and meaningful participation in the various spaces and processes where decisions are made on the governance of collectively-held and managed land, and reinforcing their capacity to defend their rights collectively. The same is true for youth and other marginalised groups, in a context where communal land rights are increasingly under threat. For further information, please visit the project website. Biodynamic Agriculture ConferenceBetween 5th-8th February the main Biodynamic Agriculture Conference took place in Dornach, Switzerland. 900 people from 48 nationalities attended including Dr. Julia Wright, Leonardo Felipe Faedo and Rovier Verdi. The spiritual orientation of biodynamic agriculture arouses the interest of increasing numbers of people. The attendees wanted to gain a better grasp of this particular approach in order to develop it further and to communicate it more clearly with colleagues, customers, friends, etc. The conference showed how integrating the spiritual aspect helps understand our current situation and how it can assist in practical work to act independently and responsibly in agriculture, in processing and in trade. On the way back to the UK, the research students visited two organic farms in the Netherlands. The first of them is named Bio Huiberts, which mainly produces organic Tulip bulbs. The other is an organic dairy farm, that besides producing milk and cheese also makes a great quality Kefir. Both farms are driving innovative approaches to the market aiming sustainability, consumer awareness and wellbeing. Call for input: Crowdsourced curated resource list of ‘protocols for participatory, engaged-, decolonial, Indigenous, feminist research’The People’s Knowledge group are putting together a curated resource list of research protocols from different perspectives/traditions/positionalities. You can see other resource lists we’ve developed on Citizen Science and Participatory Video here. Do you have anything to add? Ideas? Comments? Links? Email: colin.anderson@coventry.ac.uk. Call for interventions – *Food matters* the role of your dinner plate in degrowing the economyA call for contributions to the Debrowth2020 conference in Manchester (1-5 September) by Nina Moeller and Martin Pedersen. They are inviting contributions that explore alternative visions for transforming food production and distribution and what their different implications are for individual, community and planetary health, as well as for the configuration of power relations: what kinds of livelihoods and what kinds of habitats are created by any particular vision? Lume: New publication on method of economic-ecological analysis to support AgroecologyThe latest book published in CAWR’s Reclaiming Diversity and Citizenship Series describes methods to better understand the economic and ecological rationales of family-managed agroecosystems: Lume - a method for the economic- ecological analysis of agroecosystems Written by Paulo Petersen, Luciano Silveira, Gabriel Bianconi Fernandes and Silvio Gomes de Almeid, this book breaks new ground by providing a holistic analytical method capable of both recognizing and increasing the visibility of the labour of different people involved in the management of agroecosystems. To this end, the authors adopts an analytical approach consistent with a feminist economics critical of the sexual division of labour and patriarchy as well as the cultural and ideological underpinnings of dominant economic relations that mask the essential role of women farmers in generating social wealth. In this book, the Lume method is used in a study of the impact of a public water security programme on the socio-ecological resilience of family farming in a drought- affected region of Brazil. The authors show how the use of the Lume method has helped reveal the growing contradictions between the scientific premises of agricultural modernization and the local realities of family farming in different socio-environmental contexts. At the same time, the Lume method is shown to be extremely useful in enabling participatory processes of knowledge production on the positive multi-dimensional impacts of agroecology on agricultural development. Participatory approaches to science and technologyThis post at the People’s Knowledge site discusses participatory technology assessment, sharing its key features and providing case studies to illustrate some of its dimensions. "...Many new technologies come with serious potential risks. When developed by powerful groups, such innovations are initially designed to make a profit, rather than to improve social or ecological conditions in the world. These technologies may have the effect of exerting greater control over, or even harming, society and nature. Participatory technology assessment (PTA) is a means whereby people, especially those who have traditionally been excluded from decisions, are able to influence the development and application of technologies." The 20th anniversary of the Mobile Biodiversity Festival in Telangana, South IndiaThe Deccan Development Society invited Professor Michel Pimbert to give a plenary address at the closing ceremony Biodiversity Festival as part of its 20th year anniversary celebration. A long-time partner of CAWR, the Deccan Development Society (DDS) was awarded the prestigious Equator prize by the United Nations in 2019. This award was given to the women Sanghams of the DDS in recognition for their dryland farming as a “local nature-based sustainable solution for the climate crisis”. The closing ceremony of the month-long Biodiversity Festival was an opportunity to officially launch the Zahareebad Agenda as a solution to the climate crisis in dryland India. The Zahareebad Agenda is largely a people’s response to the threats of a fast warming climate for food, agriculture and human well-being. Most notably, the Zahareebad Agenda’s agroecological solutions to increasing water scarcity and higher temperatures are based on the sophisticated local knowledge of marginalised women farmers and their biodiversity-rich dryland farming practices. The closing ceremony of the Mobile Biodiversity Festival confirmed that the local governments of 160 administrative units in Medak district (Telangana) have endorsed this people’s agenda to strengthen community and socio-ecological resilience to climate change. Find our more about the Zahareebad Agenda via this video and this PDF. Book Review of Everyday Experts - Transforming the Food System Is the People’s Work: Experiential Knowledge Shows us the WayCheck out this book review in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development of our access book, “Everyday Experts: How people’s knowledge can transform the food system. “…If you have read, or written, about how society needs a transformation in how we go about addressing social justice and environmental sustainability or regeneration in the face of mounting global challenges, this book will be a valuable contribution to your reading list and you might find inspiration here. In fact, it would be hard not to. . . .” Download the book here. Protecting indigenous cultures is crucial for saving the world’s biodiversityKrystyna Swiderska wrote an article for The Conversation entitled 'Protecting indigenous cultures is crucial for saving the world’s biodiversity.' Read the article here. Tasting ChangeSharing food during Intimate Tastes of Time Professor Richard Demarco is one of Europe’s most influential cultural thinkers, radical educators and advocates for art as a force for creative, intellectual and spiritual renewal. On 20th February, as part of the Time and Timelessness symposium coordinated by Caroline Wiseman in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, Dr Miche Fabre Lewin joined Richard in conversation exploring the language of art as one of mystery and love which inspires emotion, connects beyond boundaries and has visionary potential. Later that evening, Miche co-hosted an edible intervention with Dr Flora Gathorne-Hardy entitled Intimate Tastes of Time in the South Beach Lookout Tower on Aldeburgh beach. Eaters became agriculturalists invited to experience the simplicity of an ecological menu based on the colour, texture and succulence of fresh, locally grown, organic harvests of the season. This gastronomy of dishes was communing with our timeless interdependence with the living Earth. Everyday, every mouthful, we inhabit an ethics of care. ‘The action Intimate Taste of Time was an essential ingredient to the whole strategy we must develop to link the food we eat with the delicate business of being a human being having to digest food properly in the 21st century. In gathering human beings together, to dine together, to share the extraordinary basic experience and the process of consuming food, people are revealing their function and purpose on the planet now, as artists. It was an artwork orchestrated and conducted where we were encouraged, inspired indeed, to consider the importance of the slow and elegant process of transferring food into our digestive systems - we used our hands beautifully. The care you took to arrange and present the food brought back memories to me. You are continuing the work of Joseph Beuys as you explore how we sit down and enjoy the company of our fellow human beings with a proper understanding and respect for the fruits of the earth.’ Conversation Exchange with Richard Demarco 24th February 2020. Building Resilience to Natural Disasters in populated African Mountain EcosystemsClick here to read this new short piece from George McAllister at AgroecologyNow. "...While the biophysical stabilisation of natural resources is central to this investigation into resilience, responsiveness and recovery from extreme weather events, so too is an element of covert resistance to technocratically imposed farming norms, and the transgressive solidarity of social farming that seeks to challenge structured dependency and social division." Congratulations to Elise!Elise successfully defended her thesis and passed her viva with minor corrections this month. The title of her thesis is: The Potentials for Agroecology and Food Sovereignty in the Scottish Uplands. Congratulations Elise! New CAWR-Food First Backgrounder: Scaling Agroecology from the Bottom up: Six Domains of TransformationHow can agroecology be advanced, amplified, scaled up and out? In each context, there are enabling and disabling conditions that shape the potential for agroecology to be scaled. This Food First Issue Brief presents an overview of our work at AgroecologyNow! and identifies six ‘domains of transformation’ that are essential to consider in agroecology transformations. Call for Papers - The Future of Food 2: Eating Socially and Sourcing SustainablyFollowing the success of the inaugural symposium last year, the Future of Food 2 symposium invites stakeholders across business and society to present, discuss and collaborate in moving forward the sustainable food agenda. Presentations and a panel discussion will be given by leading thinkers from companies, charities and grassroots movements to prompt valuable discussion at this one day event. You are invited all participants to attend a social eating networking event directly following the symposium. For more information please visit the website. Internship testimonial“I've just finished my internship at CAWR. I spent about three months here immersed in a very different culture and research centre. This opportunity exceeded my expectations. Everyone, both staff and students, were so professional, welcoming, friendly and helpful that make me feel at home. I did not see the time go by. In this time at CAWR, I could learn things that for sure will make a difference in my life. Thank you all. I appreciate this opportunity and I wish that one day I can do the same for someone.” - Rovier Verdi If you are interested in joining us for an internship, please contact layla.riches@coventry.ac.uk. EventsAgroecological practices as territorial development: an analytical schema from Brazilian agroforestry case studies with Les Levidow Politics of Difference and Decolonisation Special Seminar for International Women's Day with Dee Woods 12th March 10:30-12:30 Click here to book your place Passivhaus New Build and Retrofit – A holistic approach to energy efficiency and closing the performance gap with John Williamson 17th March 11:30-12:30 Click here to book a place Nature based solutions to sustainable water treatment with Luiza Campos 19th March 11:30-12:30 Click here to book a place Using network ecology to understand and secure resilient agroecosystems with Fred Windsor Publications
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