Origin, Diversity and Territories Forum 2021
Ruptures and rebounds of territorialized food systems
Place: Val Poschiavo, Grisons, Switzerland
Dates: October 13, 14 and 15, 2021
Rural territories are going through an unprecedented crisis, testing the resilience of their communities and their ecosystems. For several years, the deep ecological crisis has revealed their long-term vulnerabilities generated by an economic model that still too often operates at the expense of natural resources. In many cases, agriculture, forestry and water exploitation are at the root of biodiversity loss, soil degradation and climate change that has systemic effects on the entire food system. In this year of the World Summit on Food Systems convened by the UN Secretary General, debates are multiplying and identifying the profound changes necessary to stop the spiral of degradation of ecosystems and the living conditions of the world’s population. These reflections are marked by the health, economic and social crisis, which marks a real turning point.
The current period is one of experimentation and reinvention of sustainable development trajectories and lifestyles in the territories. Territorialized food systems are experiencing breaks in the value chain with the closure of restaurants, for example, but are rebounding by developing direct sales.
Forum 2021 proposes to go to the Grisons, in Italian-speaking Switzerland, to meet the actors of Val Poschiavo, a small intelligent and organic valley, which faced a natural disaster in 1987. Entirely rebuilt, the community is starting again on new bases and developing an innovative territorial project. The current crisis allows us to measure how the development model of this rural community is resilient and sustainable.
The particular context of the pandemic is an opportunity for each territory to find new impulses, to accelerate underlying changes, to test new technical and social modalities. The paradigm shift can be imposed in times of crisis, which reveals many serious accumulated dysfunctions. The crisis allows this questioning of old models in favor of solutions that allow the survival of communities.
The 2021 edition of the Forum wants to participate in the writing of local solutions, by being a space of confrontation and discussion built from the experience of each participant. Listening to the weak signals, which carries the premises of new forms of local governance, bolder collective actions and radical changes. Participants will be called upon to draw together the contours of new paradigms, which place rural communities called to profound changes to rethink and recompose the food systems of their territories. We invite you to consider how trajectories can recompose quality links between natural resources and local knowledge.
It is about rethinking the preservation of natural and cultural diversities and heritages as founding elements of socio-ecological resilience. It is also a question of recomposing the role of the new formal and informal economies where consumers assert their socio-environmental responsibilities.
Today, no one can claim to provide a turnkey solution to crises of any kind. This is why the ODT 2021 Forum proposes a place of reflection, between research and political advocacy, to stir up opinions and put forward innovative ideas for rebound. We do not have empirical data on rebound, we do not know all the specificities of a territory to be able to define a strategy of response to crises. The crisis itself is not yet complete and this reduces our ability to study rebound as an observable phenomenon. On the other hand, the rebound can be studied as a design issue by adapting and testing itself to the uncertainty of crises and its fluctuating aspect. It will be through a real innovative co-design that we will be able to think about the rebound and put it to the test of the current system in territories whose qualities and vulnerabilities we know.
Alternating with field visits and debates with local actors, participants are invited to meet in three simultaneous languages (fr/en/es) on site but also remotely in two virtual forums at the rhythm of their own time zones. This mixed formula is made possible thanks to the impressive technological progress of the last months, and will allow each participant to have a voice in an intercultural and transdisciplinary dialogue, digging the fertile furrow of innovative projects in the territories.
The debates are structured around plenary sessions and four workshops, which are places to discover the realities of the field, to share and discuss.
This year, the workshops will be an opportunity for prospective approaches based on contributions that present rebounds after strong past or present ruptures of territorialized food systems. These discussions will be conducted in four thematic workshops: