Health & Territories: Health as a development lever in the framework of agroecological transition (H&T)

Last update: 27 February 2023

One of the nine DeSIRA projects involved in DISSEM-INN, the H&T project focuses on agroecology from a "One Health" perspective.

The DeSIRA initiative
Launched at the One Planet Summit in Paris in 2017, the “Development Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture (DeSIRA)” initiative is supported by European Commission’s Directorate for International Partnerships (DG INTPA). By funding more than sixty projects worldwide, this program aims to promote innovation in agriculture and transformation of partner countries’ agri-food systems to make them more resilient to the effects of climate change. Through the original concept of “action-research” for a “development smart innovation”, it seeks to promote a science in partnership that meet development challenges.

Description

The Health & Territories project postulates that the health state of a given territory, desired by the actors, can be mobilised as a "Common" to define the actions to be carried out within the framework of the agroecological transition. By combining the "One Health" framework with the agroecological transition framework, it will be possible to define and improve global health at the territorial level, to contribute to the implementation of sustainable agrosystems. The aim of the project is to jointly improve the health of humans, agricultural production systems, and the environment, and then to positively and sustainably impact the livelihoods of people in given territories.

To do so, the project adopts a participatory, iterative, and evolutionary approach to co-identify issues and co-design solutions. This approach will be implemented within living labs, conceived as experimental frameworks for designing and testing new agroecological practices, tools, knowledge, norms and discourses, as well as the institutional arrangements that accompany them. The living labs will have a defined geographical and institutional scope, and will concern an issue identified by the local community participating in the living labs with the project partners.

This approach based on support will enable the development of new tools and the implementation of existing tools for local consultation and coordination. It relies on participatory methods such as territorial foresight (anticipation), companion modelling (ComMod) and impact monitoring/assessment (ImpresS). Tools for the analysis of production systems, socio-economic dynamics, public policies and institutions will be also used.

Countries concerned

Senegal (Guiers Lake), Benin (cotton areas), Laos (Champasak), Cambodia (Battambang and Preah Vihear).

Length

2021 -2026

Actors involved

Coordinator: CIRAD (UMR ASTRE)
Platform in partnership for research and training (dP): dP-PPZS, dP-Grease
Partners: ISRA, UGB, SAED, IRC, University of Parakou, University of Abomey Calavi, INRAB, National University of Agriculture du Benin, IRD, Stockholm Resilience Centre
Funding: DeSIRA initiative (DG INTPA/UE), AFD