2020: the first year of the Avaclim project.
This is the time to identify more than forty initiatives that are representative of the agroecological approach in the seven Avaclim countries. This identification highlights the social, economic and environmental effects. The characterisation of the initiatives is reflected in the development of a sheet for each initiative.
What is an agroecological initiative?
An initiative is defined in this project as " an organised set of actions carried out by an individual, group or legal entity, characterised by a medium- to long-term approach aimed at intensifying and optimising the ecological processes of all components of agriculture through approaches, methods, techniques and practices falling within the spectrum of agroecology and its transformative capacity, in spatial dimensions that go beyond individual plots of land, with a view to a continuous transformation of the interdependent ecological, economic and social elements in order to strengthen the resilience of the overall system".
The initiatives identified in each country are diverse. They cover agroecological intensification, ecological crop protection, erosion control, environmental education, water management, agroforestry, land management, farmer seed production, and processing and marketing. They are carried out at the farm, market and territorial levels and bring together a variety of actors such as civil society, researchers and sometimes universities.
Construction of a factsheet
Through exchanges with the initiative holders and the structures that supported their emergence, the partner NGOs in the seven countries reviewed the organisation of activities within the initiative, the structure of the members, the context that explained its emergence, the results observed (demonstrated by studies if possible) and the alignment with the ten principles defining agroecology defined by the FAO.
The published sheets are a provisional version of a characterisation work that was deepened through the country workshops during which the initiative holders analysed these elements.
