ELVULMED

The Mediterranean basin has faced important changes of its environment: (i) urbanization and demographic pressure on natural resources, mainly land and water; (ii) the food habits and cultural changes, and (iii) the climatic change. Due to its strong historical and cultural links with the natural and social environment, livestock activities, and particularly small ruminant ones, occupy a structural role in the social and spatial organization and in the household economy, notably thanks to their adaptive capacities to harsh conditions. In the South Mediterranean, one process of adaptation has been the development of livestock activities in the overcrowded zones (household systems) to face to the demographic pressure. In the North, the main adaptive strategy has consisted in increasing the abilities of livestock activities in valorizing marginal resources (crop by-products or uncultivated land in the inlands). Nevertheless if livestock activities have well adapted to recent changes in the short term, the mid and long term adaptation to ongoing changes remains uncertain in terms of sustainable development. The exploratory project ELVULMED aims at analyzing the role of livestock activities in reducing the vulnerability at the farm/family land territorial level face to global change and at identifying the key-determinants of adaptive processes according to two contrasted zones in the North and South Mediterranean. The adaptation of livestock systems and their role in reducing vulnerability implies to understand, characterize and quantify the interactions between livestock activities, the private and collective use of natural resources and the market access and overall adaptation to global change. How to integrate the multiple functions of livestock farming activities and their direct and indirect impacts on environment, on society and economics? How to integrate the multiple spatial and time scales in a pertinent research approach? The main challenges will be to identify the key parameters to model the interactions between (1) the human activities (associated with livestock and resources management), (2) the territorial development (in terms of social inequities, spatial segregation, migration and movements, food security, soil and water use, and landscape) and (3) the global change. We propose an exploratory project that aims to integrate the different approaches and scales of vulnerability to develop a conceptual model on the adaptive processes face to global changes in the livestock territories of Mediterranean. This project is based on two tasks: T1) understanding the role of livestock in reducing vulnerability at the farm/household and territorial levels; T2) analyze the adaptability of livestock systems to global change using retrospective analysis of factors that have affected the use of resources (land and water) and livestock management and analysis of representations and perceptions of future challenges. This research will be based on an important data collection on present and past trends by using archived information, and carrying out retrospective, sociological and anthropologist surveys on the perceptions and representations of changes by the populations. The project is built on two contrasted zones in the circum-Mediterranean (Egypte, France) in order to identify and analyze the diversity of adaptive processes according to the historical, cultural and socioeconomic context and the magnitude of environmental changes. From these contrasted situations, we will design a conceptual framework that could be extended to a larger panel of situations in the circum-Mediterranean zone.