- The course was organized within the framework of the PASTINNOVA PRIMA project, aimed at developing innovation on pastoralism through a Living Lab approach
- Project partners from 10 Mediterranean countries (Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Slovenia, Spain, Tunisia and Turkey) attended the training workshop
Innovation and sustainability took centre stage at the workshop held at CIHEAM Zaragoza (Spain) on January 24-25 about Mediterranean pastoralism. Participants from 10 Mediterranean countries (Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Slovenia, Spain, Tunisia and Turkey) attended the course, organized within the framework of the PASTINNOVA project, supported by the European PRIMA foundation and programme for research and innovation solutions in the Mediterranean region.
"The key objective of PASTINNOVA is to reinforce the sustainability, profitability and resilience of small pastoral farms"
Antonio López-Francos, CIHEAM Zaragoza
The project utilizes a co-creation approach, based on the theory of Living Laboratories, in order to upscale existing innovations for a broad range of socio-cultural, economic, environmental and policy aspects. The training workshop at CIHEAM Zaragoza served to train facilitators of the project's Regional Living Labs and familiarize project partners on the various methods and activities that they will employ within these labs.
"Facilitation means that inside the PASTINNOVA Regional Living Labs, trained facilitators will support a group of pastoral actors towards reaching our shared key objective, which is to reinforce the sustainability, profitability and resilience of small pastoral farms", explained Antonio López-Francos, Projects and Cooperative Networks Administrator at CIHEAM Zaragoza.
As a project partner, CIHEAM's Institute in Spain, a point of reference for international cooperation in matters concerning the agriculture and food sector, supports the dissemination, communication and capacity-building efforts of PASTINNOVA. Within this role, the Institute was responsible for hosting and organizing the project's internal training workshop, where the main challenges for pastoralism in the Mediterranean region were discussed.
Pastoral systems: drivers of sustainable and inclusive development
Pastoral systems provide a wide range of ecosystem services and play multiple roles towards sustainable and inclusive development in rural territories. "Pastoralism provides a lot of benefits to humanity and these benefits are sometimes understimated. They deal with the welfare of people, resistance to climate change, rural societies that continue to inhabit mountains, remote areas, coastal areas, islands... Pastoralism is the basic source of livelihood for this people", detailed Athanasios Ragkos, agricultural economist and researcher at ELGO-DIMITRA (Greece) and coordinator of the PASTINNOVA PRIMA project.
"We want to provide solutions for pastoral people in order to increase their livelihoods and involve them in more efficient and inclusive societies"
Athanasios Ragkos, PASTINNOVA Project Coordinator
However, pastoral systems face multiple challenges and structural weaknesses which render them vulnerable to policy, environment and market uncertainties. The PASTINNOVA project is intended to support them by setting up innovations, business and organizational models to valorize their full potential as drivers towards agro-ecological transition in livestock production.
"We want to bring together partners that are doing multidisciplinary research on pastoralism and also the people, the stakeholders who are working closely with us. We want to provide solutions for pastoral people in order to increase their livelihoods and involve them in more efficient and inclusive societies", said Athanasios Ragkos.
