The potential of agroecology to build climate-resilient livelihoods and food systems

With the severe impacts that climate change is having on food security and nutrition, there is an urgent call for more sustainable and climate-resilient food systems. The quest for sustainable solutions is gaining increased importance as the world is tackling the COVID-19 pandemic and wants to “build back better”. A recent scientific study shows that agroecology could play a vital role here

Measuring agroecology:Introducing a methodological framework and a community of practice approach

Over the last few years, a small but increasing number of researchers and organizations has been involved in tracking funding flows to agroecology, analyzing development assistance, climate finance, and research funds for their contribution to an agroecological transformation of food systems, including as part of the efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This has led to the emergence of a community of practice (CoP) meeting and exchanging in a number of different forums—Financing Agroecology Civil Society CoP, the Agroecology Donor Group, and the Working Group on Financing and Investments of the Coalition for Food Systems Transformation Through Agroecology (Agroecology Coalition). In this article, we report on a process of collaboratively developing a methodological framework, using the High Level Panel of Experts of the Committee on World Food Security 13 principles of agroecology as foundation. This framework overcomes some limitations of previous methodologies for evaluating degrees of agroecological integration (including those using Gliessman’s 5 levels of food system change) and facilitates a robust qualitative assessment of projects, programs, and project portfolios with respect to their “agroecologicalness.” The framework conceives of agroecology as paradigm-shifting rather than as incremental improvements to existing food systems. It enables global comparability as well as local contextualization of each principle. While the need for this framework arose from the desire to monitor—and increase—financial support for an urgently needed transformation toward agroecology, the framework can equally contribute to the design of projects and programs, which aim to radically transform food and farming systems. It also has value as an educational tool, in specifying through statements of value and concrete examples, what agroecological work aims at. This article introduces our framework and argues for an expanded CoP approach to use it widely and share the results through the digital platform that will be developed for that purpose

The potential of agroecology to build climate-resilient livelihoods and food systems

Climate change has severe negative impacts on livelihoods and food systems worldwide. Our future climate according to latest scenarios seriously undermine current efforts to improve the state of food security and nutrition, especially in sub-Sahara Africa. To address this to its full extent, there is an urgent need for transformational change of our food systems towards more sustainability and resilience. Agroecology could play a vital role here. As a response to FAO’s governing bodies’ call for increased evidence-based work on agroecology, this study aims to elaborate on existing links between agroecology and climate change. It provides evidence on the technical and policy potential of agroecology to build resilient food systems. Inspired by the idea that transformation will only happen through a coordinated approach among all levels, this study was jointly developed by a broad set of actors from UN agencies (FAO), research institutes (FIBL, Bioversity, ISRA) and CSOs (Biovision, Enda Pronat, ICE) and thus combines evidence from a broad range of backgrounds and perspectives. The overall research question of this study was: How can agroecology foster climate change adaptation, mitigation and resilience through practices and policies? To provide a robust and evidence based answer to this we analysed three different dimensions: 1. International policy arena, in particular in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture; 2. Peer-reviewed scientific studies on agroecology applying a meta-analysis; and 3. Two case studies in Kenya and Senegal that assess both, the policy potential of agroecology in respective national settings and the technical potential of agroecology to foster climate resilience on farm-level. The main findings of the study are: - Robust scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecology increases climate resilience. Success factors for this are that agroecology builds on: a) ecological principles, in particular on biodiversity, overall diversity and healthy soils (meta-analysis and case studies results); b) social aspects, in particular on the co-creation and sharing of knowledge and fostering traditions (case study results). - More than ten percent of the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) by UNFCCC member states mention agroecology and consider it a valid approach to address climate change. The climate potential of agroecology is furthermore backed by the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land and the 2019 HLPE report of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) (int. policy analysis result). - The interdisciplinary and systemic nature of agroecology is key for its true transformational power. However these characteristics are also the main challenges for both, conducting comprehensive research and policy revisions: typically research concepts and policy processes focus on the productive dimension with selective sectorial views (meta-analysis and policy analysis results). The key recommendations from this study are: - Given the sound knowledge base, fostering agroecology to build resilience should be recognized as a viable climate change adaptation strategy. - Barriers to the scaling-up of agroecology need to be addressed: amongst others, improved access to knowledge and understanding of systemic approaches should be fostered across sectors, stakeholders and scales. - Further comparative research on the multidimensional effects of agroecology is needed. - Agroecology’s transformative resilience-building potential depends on its holistic and systemic nature which goes beyond a set of practices and includes: a social movement for producers’ empowerment and a multidisciplinary scientific paradigm

Massive Nest-Box Supplementation Boosts Fecundity, Survival and Even Immigration without Altering Mating and Reproductive Behaviour in a Rapidly Recovered Bird Population

Habitat restoration measures may result in artificially high breeding density, for instance when nest-boxes saturate the environment, which can negatively impact species' demography. Potential risks include changes in mating and reproductive behaviour such as increased extra-pair paternity, conspecific brood parasitism, and polygyny. Under particular cicumstances, these mechanisms may disrupt reproduction, with populations dragged into an extinction vortex. With the use of nuclear microsatellite markers, we investigated the occurrence of these potentially negative effects in a recovered population of a rare secondary cavity-nesting farmland bird of Central Europe, the hoopoe (Upupa epops). High intensity farming in the study area has resulted in a total eradication of cavity trees, depriving hoopoes from breeding sites. An intensive nest-box campaign rectified this problem, resulting in a spectacular population recovery within a few years only. There was some concern, however, that the new, high artificially-induced breeding density might alter hoopoe mating and reproductive behaviour. As the species underwent a serious demographic bottleneck in the 1970–1990s, we also used the microsatellite markers to reconstitute the demo-genetic history of the population, looking in particular for signs of genetic erosion. We found i) a low occurrence of extra-pair paternity, polygyny and conspecific brood parasitism, ii) a high level of neutral genetic diversity (mean number of alleles and expected heterozygosity per locus: 13.8 and 83%, respectively) and, iii) evidence for genetic connectivity through recent immigration of individuals from well differentiated populations. The recent increase in breeding density did thus not induce so far any noticeable detrimental changes in mating and reproductive behaviour. The demographic bottleneck undergone by the population in the 1970s-1990s was furthermore not accompanied by any significant drop in neutral genetic diversity. Finally, genetic data converged with a concomitant demographic study to evidence that immigration strongly contributed to local population recovery