“Reconciling biodiversity conservation and population development”

This was the theme of the symposium organized on Wednesday, October 18, 2023 by the IUCN French Committee with the AFD - Agence Française de Développement.
Drawing on its experience in numerous contexts in Madagascar, Mozambique, Vietnam and Morocco, Agrisud International presented the strategies implemented in its various fields of intervention and shared the lessons learned.

Biodiversity & agricultural development

“Biodiversity conservation may not be the main focus of Agrisud's activities as an economic development NGO, but biodiversity is at the heart of our projects since we act in the agricultural sector, and more specifically in family farming, which is one of the driving forces behind deforestation" declared Elphège Ghestem-Zahir, General Director of Agrisud and panelist of the first sequence which "crossed the perspectives" between conservation and international solidarity organizations.

Elphège went on to explain the 3 levels at which biodiversity is taken into account in Agrisud's actions, to different degrees and according to specific modalities:

At farm level, preserving resources, and therefore agro-biodiversity, is central to system stability. The professionalization courses set up with the farms are therefore systematically focused on agro-ecological practices, with, for example, work on the balance between auxiliaries and pests in the plots, or work on crop and varietal diversity.

At the level of agrosystems, a larger scale than that of the farm, the aim is to preserve "production areas", for example through reforestation actions to limit erosion, or actions to maintain plant cover in fragile agro-ecosystems such as the oases in Morocco.

Finally, in protected areas, Agrisud complements the skills of other players and works on the agricultural components of more global programs, such as in Madagascar and Mozambique, to propose alternatives to agricultural systems that generate pressure on natural resources.

Taking into account the objectives of biodiversity conservation in development projects and vice versa: myth or reality?

The stakeholders present are unanimous: the strategies to be implemented must reconcile biodiversity conservation and the socio-economic development of populations. But the paths to getting there are not easy!

Elphège stresses the need for multi-factorial analysis, specific to each territory, the need to understand the interplay of players, the need to work with players with different prerogatives and different outlooks to define shared trajectories... She also points out that the issues require much longer time steps than those of projects, and that the resources to be deployed are considerable.

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Find out more about the IUCN French Committee

Conference program (in French)