The evolution and adaptation of agriculture has become a major challenge in North Africa, especially the region's high food-import dependence and vulnerability to climate change. Agricultural policies have resulted in fostering and sustaining intensification processes, decreasing environmental capacities for the future while maintaining high levels of poverty among agricultural workers and small-scale farmers. To find measures that mitigate these issues, agroecology offers an answer to the challenges of global sustainability and helps improve local resilience. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Agroecology is: "A holistic and integrated approach that simultaneously applies ecological and social concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agriculture and food systems. It seeks to optimize the interactions between plants, animals, humans, and the environment while also addressing the need for socially equitable food systems within which people can exercise choice over what they eat and how and where it is produced. Agroecology is concurrently a science, a set of practices, and a social movement."
NATAE project brings together research institutions, international organizations, and NGOs with significant experience in agroecology approaches to research, evaluate current practices, determine advantages and disadvantages, and contribute to transforming agricultural practices in North Africa. The project implements a participatory approach in 6 North African countries (Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, and Libya), setting up 6 living labs. These Living Labs characterise, assess, and stimulate local stakeholders' dynamics driven by an analysis of consumer behaviour around agroecological potentials and constraints for the region. These living labs represent the main relevant agro-socio-environmental zones of the region, including oasis and peri-oasis, peri-urban, mountains, cereals plain, and irrigated valleys. They have also benefited from previous development and research projects in sustainable agriculture, providing valuable inputs regarding existing agroecological practices. The NATAE project aims to identify optimal combinations of agroecological practices and develop a replicable methodology for designing evidence-based locally-tailored strategies for agroecological transitions. It also materializes its findings through various outputs based on approaches built with the Living Labs and agroecological perspectives from social, economic, and ecological viewpoints. These outputs include the establishment of a durable Mediterranean network and community of knowledge, the MEDAE, the signing of Memoranda of Cooperation, the development of Participatory Systems of Guarantee, participative experimentation, and adaptations to educational and professional training curricula, among others.
Building on the strength of an exceptional multidisciplinary consortium of 22 partners from 14 countries in North Africa and Europe, NATAE will broadly disseminate its findings, impacting future curricula in North Africa and Europe, future development programs and future policies.
