Territorialised agri-food systems and climate change
Jean-Louis Rastoin, Mahjouba Zaiter, Zied Ben Youssef
According to the forecasting carried out by Agrimonde experts (Paillard et al., 2010), North Africa and the Middle East will be the regions with the worst deficit in terms of food resources in the world by 2050. Nevertheless, these estimations do not take into account the effects of climate change that could, in the long term, cut crop yields by 30% in the region. The consequences of such a scenario would obviously be disastrous on the social, economic and environmental levels.
In Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMC), agriculture and related activities employ at least 72 million people (25% of the total population). Around 2 million jobs a year will have to be created between 2010 and 2030 in the region, in addition to the necessary resorption of a high rate of structural unemployment.
The 11 SEMC are likely to undergo severe food insecurity, with deficits that could reach up to USD 50 billion in 2030, thus jeopardising public health and social cohesion in these countries (Rastoin et al., 2012).
The Mediterranean basin, with 1.6% of the global territory, hosts 10% of known plant species and 18% of known animal species (Padilla, 2012). It is therefore rich in seriously threatened biodiversity.
Thus, it seems necessary to study the potential links between food safety issues and agricultural natural resources dynamics in the Mediterranean. In its works, IPEMED suggests the implementation of North-South and South-South agricultural partnerships, based on integrated territorialised food systems (Rastoin et Benabderrazik, 2014) capable of tackling sustainable development issues, and especially climate change.
This paper propose some ideas on the contribution of territorialised agri-food systems to climate change in the Mediterranean through the presentation of the projet of an agro-ecological cluster situated in the MEdjerba valley in Tunisie.
Authors :
Jean-Louis Rastoin, UNESCO Chair in World Food Systems, Montpellier SupAgro, IPEMED associate-expert
Mahjouba Zaiter, Policy officer at Bizerte competitiveness cluster
Zied Ben Youssef, President of the Béja agricultural development association