Climate change (CC), through gradual changes in ecosystems and extreme events, jeopardizes human health, human security and food security. Society needs collective solutions for mitigation and adaptation to CC. Many such solutions have been developed locally, through processes of social innovation and transformational adaptation, but they have received little support. However, the IPCC has stressed the need to pay more attention to these experiences because they consider the context in their proposed actions. Local and traditional knowledge, social learning, and knowledge sharing are examples of such transformational adaptations.
Agri-food (AF) systems also need to adapt to impacts of climate change. Past challenges of pre-industrial agriculture such as droughts, flooding or access to resources, have parallels with current and predicted impacts of CC. Therefore past knowledge, hardly documented within the CC research has a great potential to foster adaptation to CC. Additionally, women’s role in AF systems is critical. They participate in all parts of the systems and have developed their own local traditional knowledge in agriculture and food (LTKAF). Indeed, in looking at actors prompting adaptation to CC, women’s knowledge can play a major role but their contribution has rarely been studied or acknowledged. In studying agriculture and food processes, the IPCC raises the need to use a food system perspective (from production to consumption). AF sociology, which has a systemic approach and recognises the complexity of agriculture and its interrelation with other sectors and nature, perfectly suits this recommendation and responds to the need for a research with global perspective focused on local contexts. In this project, framed within AF sociology and using an intersectionalityy approach and gender perspective, we study two poorly investigated elements of European AF systems: 1) the potentiality of LTKAF to provide plausible strategies to promote adaptation to climate change in the current socioeconomic context from a food system perspective; and 2) the differentiated role of men and women, in intersection with other variables, in the construction, maintenance and transmission of such knowledge.
The research takes place in three mountain areas in Catalunya and Andalucia. In Catalunya we are analysing extensive livestock systems in Pallars, in the Pyrenees. In Andalucia, we ara analysig both vegetables gardens in Valle del Genal, in Serrania de Ronda together with the AGATA project, and extensive livestock in Pontones (Cazorla), the latter in collaboration with the Explora project HERICCA (Socio-Ecological Heritization of ICCAs in Spain and Morocco).
