The H2020 project Faster (Farmers’ Adaptation and Sustainability in Tunisia through Excellence in Research) has amongst its objectives to set up one Living lab in order to test specific Farm Advisory System (FAS) solutions targeting the complete series of actors in the farming chain in the North-West region of Tunisia.
The solutions found will be converted into practical knowledge: a series of FAS Living Lab Factsheets. The latter will detail possible solutions (adaptation strategies, technologies, etc.) to address the major challenges on adaptation to climate change identified by working groups of active members in the agricultural sector.
FASTER project’s Living lab focuses on knowledge transfer on adaptation to climate change strategies between researchers in the field of water, soil and forest management, and practitioners engaged in Farm Advisory System in Tunisia.
Following field visits, meetings and workshops, the consortium of this H2020 project organised another preparatory meeting on the 13th of February in order to keep the process going. Particularly, this workshop aimed to inform the participants about:
- The whole Living Lab process.
- The Living Lab objectives.
- The Living Lab expected results.
- How to co-produce the FAS Living Lab factsheets.
- The identification of lab leaders and potential group members
Construction of thematic groups
Following an introductive session about Faster Living Lab process, over 100 participants split into distinct groups of interests to concretely work on the challenges addressed. To do so, they were provided draft versions of factsheets in order to visualise the format of the future output. The documents facilitated will support the participants to address their adaptation solutions on the topics they were assigned.
The following initial 13 topic-groups were selected during the preparatory meeting: soil erosion, soil fertility, land use, supply and infrastructure, water economy, water governance, floods, droughts, water quality, forest exploitation, forest management, forest conservation, silvopasture, livestock management and invasive species fishing.
The content of the FAS Living Lab Factsheets will be refined during the next Faster FAS Living Lab workshop to be held on 23 March 2020 in Tabarka, Tunisia.
