On 4th of March took place the 30th edition of the Brussels Briefing on “Agricultural resilience in the face of crisis and shocks”, organized by CTA in collaboration with the ACP Secretariat, the EC/DEVCO, Concord, and IFPRI at the European Economic and Social Committee, in Brussels.
During the two panels of the briefing, international experts and agriculturalists discussed the concept to resilience, and drawn attention to proven approaches and instruments around some key areas of special benefit to the small-scale farmers in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.
Highlights included a presentation of Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Honourable Minister of Agriculture of Nigeria on the six policies that have been applied in Nigeria to increase resilience. He also stressed the importance of the integration of institutions, technologies, and tools, as well as of agro-ecological approaches to build resilient agricultural systems.
Other presentations covered among others topics as: EU approach to resilience; Resilience in countries in protracted crises; the Regreening of the Sahel as a way of enhancing resilience; Drought-resilient crops at the benefit of small-scale farmers; and Building community resilience in front of disasters.
The event gathered more than 200 participants. The Brussels Development Briefing is a bi-monthly event which has the aim of tackling key issues and challenges for rural development in the context of ACP-EU cooperation.
More:
- Reader
- Biodata of the speakers
- Note
- Celebrating 30 Brussels Briefing [photos]
Below you can consult the speeches and presentations of the speakers:
Introductory remarks:
- Staffan Nilsson, President of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) [Remarks] [Video recording]
- Achille Bassilekin III, Assistant Secretary-General for Sustainable Development, ACP Secretariat [Remarks] [Video recording]
- Rajul Pandya-Lorch, Head of 2020 Initiative IFPRI [Remarks] [Video recording]
- Denis Salord, Head of Unit, Regional Programmes Sub-Saharan Africa and ACP wide, European Commission [Remarks] [Video recording]
- Michael Hailu, Director of CTA [Remarks] [VIDEO recording] [VIDEO Interview]
Special guest: Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Honourable Minister of Agriculture, Nigeria
Conducive policies in support of resilience [Speech] [Biodata] [Video recording] [VIDEO Interview]
Special guest: Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Honourable Minister of Agriculture, Nigeria, together with ichael Hailu, Director of CTA
From left to right: Rajul Pandya-Lorch, Head of 2020 Initiative IFPRI ; Isolina Boto, Head of CTA Brussels Office; Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Honourable Minister of Agriculture, Nigeria; and Michael Hailu, Director of CTA
Panel 1:
Approaches and instruments for building resilience in agriculture
This panel provided an overview of the key concepts, challenges and opportunities in building a resilient agricultural system in ACP countries.
Chair: Thijs Berman, Member of the Development Committee, European Parliament [Video recording]
- Sir Gordon Conway, Professor of International Development, Imperial College London
Agricultural resilience — what we know and what we need to know [Presentation] [Video recording]
- Thierry Kesteloot, Policy Advisor, Oxfam-Solidarité
Promoting Resilient Livelihoods [Presentation] [Video recording]
- Philippe Thomas, Head of sector, Food Crisis, DG DEVCO, European Commission
The EU approach to resilience: learning from food security crises [Presentation] [Video recording]
- Dominique Burgeon, Director of Emergency Operations and Rehabilitation Division, FAO
Building resilience in countries in protracted crises [Presentation] [Video recording]
Debate Panel 1: [Video recording]
Panel 2:
Proven successes in building resilience
This panel presented proven actions in building resilience along with lessons learned and best practices to decrease the vulnerability of agricultural systems and improve their resilience to both predictable and unexpected stresses and shocks.
Chair: H.E. Samuel Otsile Outlule, Chair of the ACP Committee of Ambassadors [Video recording]
- Jean-François Maystadt, Researcher, IFPRI
Enhancing resilience in the Horn of Africa [Presentation] [Video recording]
- Chris Reij, SLM specialist, Senior Fellow, World Resources Institute
Resilience-building in the Sahel: Regreening the Sahel [Presentation] [Video recording]
- Girma Tesfahun Kassie, Researcher Socioeconomics Programme, CIMMYT, Zimbabwe
Drought-resilient crops and resilience systems of benefit to small-scale farmers [Presentation] [Video recording]
- Federico Fadiga, Red Cross EU Office
Building community resilience [Presentation] [Video recording] [IFRC video on Namibia]
Debate Panel 2: [Video recording]
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A comprehensive and very well presented set of information but the briefing material and meeting largely miss the transformability aspects of resilience (see Folke, C., S. R. Carpenter, B. Walker, M. Scheffer, T. Chapin, and J. Rockström. 2010. Resilience thinking: integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability. Ecology and Society 15(4): 20. [online] URL: http:// http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art20/).
Under a climate change regime, innovation and transformation are the key to building resilience in agricultural systems.
Resilience thinking and assessment based on resilience are good tools for developing resilience building strategies in agricultural systems. These tools have yet to be discovered by mainstream policy processes.
I run a small network of scientists, CSOs, farmers and policy makers in Sweden that exchanges information on resilience in food systems.
Mike