PRATAM

  • by TSARA

Resilience and self-determination potential of threatened agroecological territories

The PRATAM action research initiative brings together INRAE, CIRAD, ISRA, Assane Seck University in Ziguinchor, and the University of Bern. It is supported by the TSARA initiative, the CREATES Center, and the ARTS and ACROPICS projects.

On the margins of the world of agricultural development, some rural societies have developed surprising forms of resistance to anthropogenic pressures on the environment and lifestyles, particularly due to the vitality of their cultures and customary institutions.

This is the case for the Diola people who live in the Lower Casamance Delta in southern Senegal. In an exceptional region alternating between nourishing forests, mangroves, and rich rice-growing plains, the Diola have managed to create and maintain a satisfying way of life based on a complex combination of productive (rice farming, gathering, fishing, etc.), recreational, and spiritual activities. In these societies, human-land relations are governed by robust customary institutions, which regulate access to natural resources and lead to respect for all forms of life, human and non-human. These local institutions, coupled with geographical isolation and armed conflict, have probably helped to regulate the intrusion of industrial modernity, making Lower Casamance a true "agroecological territory." However, climate change and the resurgence of new anthropogenic threats have begun to undermine this balance.

PRATAM – Potentiels de Résilience et d’Autodétermination des Territoires Agroécologiques Menacés (Potential for Resilience and Self-Determination in Threatened Agroecological Territories) – brings together academic and non-academic actors in a research-action dynamic, with three objectives:

  1. Generate actionable knowledge on the functioning of the agroecological territory of Lower Casamance, its dynamics of change, and its mechanisms of resilience.
  2. Contribute to recognition of the outstanding universal value of the territory and to the (re)activation of traditional forms of resistance.
  3. Launch an academic and socio-political debate on agroecological territories, seen as spaces of resilience, self-determination, and even transcendence in the face of the pitfalls of industrial modernity.

Project duration: 2024-2025

Contact: raphael.belmin@cirad.fr

Brochure

To go further

Senegal: Building the agroecological territory of Lower Casamance by 2050

ARTICLE TO READ HERE: https://www.cirad.fr/dans-le-monde/nos-directions-regionales/afrique-de-l-ouest-zone-seche/actualites/transformer-la-basse-casamance-en-hub-agroecologique

Launch mission for the PRATAM project: an incubator project for resilience in Lower Casamance

ARTICLE TO READ HERE: https://ur-hortsys.cirad.fr/actualites/projet-pratam