Impact Areas

Our work contributes to resilient and sustainable food systems that are territorially anchored and based on agroecological principles such as enhancing human and non-human health, low external inputs, culturally sound agrobiodiversity, social-ecosystem resilience, social cohesion, and food sovereignty. This requires transdisciplinary methods integrating natural and social sciences, traditional and innovative knowledge, with practical solutions tested and co-evaluated with involved actors.

We analyse, co-design and monitor inclusive resource management structures (common pool resources, adaptive governance) that protect against the grabbing and misuse of land, water and other natural resources, considering intersectional aspects such as gender, age, ethnicity, disability, and other marginalisation factors. We organise social dialogue events that can help empower the most marginal actors and promote equitable and transparent governance towards social and environmental justice.

We foster conceptual innovation of a socially embedded economy rooted in the principles of reciprocity, solidarity, sufficiency, and well-being. We help our partners (enterprises and cooperatives) reaching the targets to set up Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives that embody these values and contribute to a just transition toward a regenerative economy based on the principle of social and environmental justice for human and non-human entities.

We recognize that renewable energy and ecological constructions are important elements of sustainable, resilient territories and communities. We are particularly interested in the nexus between energy, infrastructure, food systems and natural resource management and how they combine and interact to foster transformations of socioecological systems. We pilot these combinations within our living labs and in the construction of our own infrastructure to showcase bioclimatic building techniques.

Our conceptual work and methods contribute to the development of a pluralistic, inclusive and holistic approach of knowledge production and dissemination, embracing diverse epistemologies including local knowledge systems through transdisciplinary approaches. Decolonizing knowledge involves equalizing the importance of various knowledge types and sources and rebalancing North-South science collaboration to be more inclusive and equitable, driven by the real needs of local contexts.