The AURORA project strives to contribute to sustainable development of agri-environmental systems ‎and, ultimately, to food security and resource-efficient and environmentally sound agricultural ‎production in the MENA region. The AURORA project launched in 2021, and will continue for a period ‎of four years. As a way to advertise and raise attention to the theme of the project early on, the ‎project partners are ‎organizing a series of five webinars throughout the ‎first year. The webinars will ‎host external academic experts and practitioners on relevant ‎topics concerning the social-ecological ‎analysis of agri-environmental systems in the MENA region.

You are required to register to the Zoom link to access the webinar. You can register from here: https://uni-kassel.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAvcO2grz8iEtE5gObVRPeelX4wWH5AyQy9 

KEYNOTE:

Socio-ecological Metabolisms and Sustainable Governance of Mediterranean Food ‎Systems by Professor Manuel González deMolina ‎

The way in which food is organized in our societies is a major source of very severe ‎environmental impacts and the direct cause of hunger and malnutrition on a global scale. ‎Rich countries are particularly responsible, as the case of Spain shows. To approach the ‎functioning of Spanish food system, a metabolic analysis is performed and its impact is ‎measured by the assess of virtual land embodied in the diet of Spaniards. There is a ‎growing consensus that this way to organize the food regime is not viable and that there ‎is a serious risk of food collapse. Building a food system based on sustainability is ‎therefore an urgent task. ‎

But the search for a sustainable food system implies a change in the current food ‎regimen dynamics that can only come from social agents by means of institutional ‎mediation. For years, agroecology has been developing strategies for scaling out ‎agroecological experiences. However, the current institutional framework blocks the ‎growth of these experiences, relegating them to the sidelines. The main challenge facing ‎agroecology is to expand the scale of agroecological experiences, building an alternative ‎food system and challenging the hegemony of the corporate food regime. This goal will ‎only be possible through social mobilization focused not only on agricultural production ‎or distribution but also on food consumption, weaving social alliances that promote ‎change. ‎