Speaker
Description
The Mediterranean region is considered a hot spot for climate change with recent acceleration generating major risks in several key sectors, particularly concerning water availability or food production (Cramer et al., 2018). The resilience of agriculture has recently become a critical challenge in supporting farmers in a context of increasing short- and long-term risks. Over the past decade, multiple authors have published resilience frameworks (Meuwissen et al., 2019; Perrin and Martin, 2021). In their review, van der Lee et al. (2022) highlighted complementarities between these frameworks, particularly between agroecological and resilience capacities approaches. While agroecological approaches focus on practices with few links with perturbations and capacities, the capacities approaches often inadequately consider farmer’s practices. Another gap identified by Darnhofer et al. (2016) is the lack of attention paid to relations - between physical entities (e.g., flows of nutrients) and social groups (e.g., power, learning) - in understanding resilience of farming systems.
This study aims to develop an operational framework for assessing the resilience of farming systems, considering both farmer’s adaptation strategies in response to perceived risks and the central role of the relations between farms, farmers and their environment (nutrient cycling, advice services, resource sharing, etc.), which contributes to their resilience capacities in facing both short- and long-term risks. We apply this framework to two contrasted areas in the Northern and Southern Mediterranean basin.
We assembled a multi-disciplinary research team (agronomy, economy, geography) to develop and operationalize the concept of relational resilience at farm scale. We conduct tests in two areas located in France (Aude valley), and Tunisia (Siliana). In each region, we conduct semi-directed interviews with different types of farmers and with other stakeholders including public institutions, input suppliers or advice services. The objectives of the farmer interviews are threefold. Firstly, we gather their perceptions of climatic risks among other risks, considering the relative importance given to both short-term (e.g., drought, price inflation) and long-term risks (e.g., disappearing resource). Secondly, we document the adaptation strategies they are implementing or planning to implement. Each strategy is detailed as a set of technical and organizational practices aimed at facing one or several perturbations. Thirdly, using practices as a starting point, we identify the resources (individual or collective) and the capacities that farmers mobilized or lacked, in order to adapt. We focus on the relationships linking actors and the elements of the system, considering them as important components for building resilience. Interviews with other stakeholders aim to identify their facilitating or hindering role for each kind of adaptation strategies.
Our framework is structured around four components (Fig. 1). Firstly, the risks that are perceived by the stakeholders include different categories of climate risks (e.g., drought, flood, temperature rising) as well as sanitary, market or political risks. Secondly, the resources mobilized are categorized according to the livelihood literature, encompassing biophysical, social and cognitive resources. Thirdly, we specifically examine inter-individual relations: with whom farmers develop adaptations, if they mobilize collective resources, i.e. what are the coordination or flows required for adaptation. Finally, resilience outcomes are described based on the evolution of the system during the adaptation process (stability, adjustment or transformation).
Our (ongoing) results show different configurations of adaptation strategies based on local factors (such as resources, climatic shocks) and regional contexts (France, Tunisia). These strategies exhibit a gradient of dependence on both physical and relational resources, which may be used to face short- and long-term risks.
The diversity of adaptation strategies among stakeholders leads us to consider the interactions occurring between actors to mobilize resources, especially for those identified as critical. The next step would be to analyze the property of the social-ecological networks that support resilience (Labeyrie et al., 2024). Such research could aid in proposing frameworks for public policies and support for agriculture in the face of increasing multifaceted risks.
References
Cramer et al., 2018. Nat Clim Change 8, 972–980.
Darnhofer et al. 2016. J Rural Stud 44, 111–122.
Labeyrie et al., 2024. Ag Sys 215, 103832.
Meuwissen et al., 2019. Ag Sys 176, 102656.
Perrin, A., Martin, G., 2021. Ag Sys 190, 103082.
van der Lee et al., 2022. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 42, 1–20.
| Keywords | resources ; risk perception ; adaptive capacity ; climate change ; farming systems |
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