Research of the Agroecological Transition Group
With this case study, we would like to illustrate how research on a concrete sustainability transformation is designed.
The Agroecological Transitions group (AET) is affiliated with ETH Zurich and is a conglomerate of different projects interested in agroecological transitions, especially in the areas of agroforestry, transdisciplinary research and food democracy. The inter-and transdisciplinary AET is an interesting example for sustainability transitions because it conducts social-ecological systems research with the declared aim of contributing to sustainable and fair agri-food system transformations. With participatory and transdisciplinary approaches, the research group engages in a dialogue with academic and non-academic actors – including hitherto marginalized groups, concepts, and methods – in order to coproduce decolonialized knowledge enhancing changes in agricultural practices that result in more sustainable and culturally accepted food systems.
Below, we will describe two selected AET projects to illustrate important characteristics of research on sustainability transformations.
The first research project is part of AET’s Agroforestry focal point and explores the links between biodiversity and coffee farmer practices in Bolivia. This collaboration between universities is headed by Prof. Dr. Chinwe Ifejika Speranza, Dr. Luis Pacheco and Prof. Dr. Johanna Jacobi, financed by the State Secretariat for Education Research and Innovation (SERI) and hosted by the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of Bern University.
In Bolivia, coffee traditionally cultivates under shade trees in agroforestry systems which improves the establishment and life spans of the plants and maintains crop and wild biodiversity. Facing increasing economic pressure in increasing short-term yields, there is a growing trend towards monocultures depending on chemical inputs.
The project which composes of Swiss and Bolivian researchers who collaborate with interested stakeholders in Bolivia, situates on two different levels. First it analyzes crop’s structure and composition and second, it investigates the rationales behind different farmers’ decisions regarding the management of the farm and patterns of cropping. The aim is to show how high-quality coffee farms contribute to biodiversity conservation and to make recommendations for sustainability for high-quality coffee by considering the areas of biodiversity conservation and economic viability.
This research project nicely represents key characteristics of transformative research that wants to question existing narratives («monocultures are the solution to deal with economic pressure») and craft alternative ones («high quality biodiverse coffee farms are the solution to deal with economic pressure») and support societal change processes by engaging with different societal actors.
The second project is part of AET’s Food Democracy focal point and is interested in linking the deliberative quality within soy and coffee value chains to ecological «foodprints».
Deliberation is understood as citizen’s political conversation and collective decision-making. Based on suggestions of democracy theory, the project explores if deliberation results in more democratic decision-making processes that enhance public goods and society’s ecological interests. Concretely, DELIBERATE aims at understanding whether and how deliberation affects ecological outcomes («foodprints») of soy and coffee value chains, and if it addresses power asymmetries among their key actors effectively.
The research team relies on a mixed-methods approach including value-chain analysis, qualitative interviews with key actors, document and database review and participant observation.
This project is an example for transformation research that analyzes structural change (from resource-intensive to sustainable value chains) and its conditions, actors, leverage points, mechanisms (e.g. deliberation) and obstacles (e.g. power asymmetries) in interconnected political-ecological systems.