A polycentric food sovereignty approach to climate resilience in the Philippines

Enhancing climate resilience in agrarian communities requires improving the underlying socioecological conditions for farmers to engage in adaptation and mitigation strategies, alongside collaborative and redistributive community development to reduce vulnerabilities. To overcome barriers to climate...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Elementa (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2022-01, Vol.10 (1)
Main Authors: Heckelman, Amber, Chappell, M. Jahi, Wittman, Hannah
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Agrarian society
Agrobiodiversity
Civil society
Climate adaptation
Climate change
Collective action
Community development
Ecological farming
Farmers
Farming systems
Food
Food sovereignty
NGOs
Nongovernmental organizations
Organizational structure
Resilience
Scientists
Seeds
Social activism
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Summary:Enhancing climate resilience in agrarian communities requires improving the underlying socioecological conditions for farmers to engage in adaptation and mitigation strategies, alongside collaborative and redistributive community development to reduce vulnerabilities. To overcome barriers to climate resilience in the Philippines, a grassroots farmer-led organization comprised of resource-poor smallholders, scientists, and nongovernmental organizations have organized a polycentric network over the past 30 years to implement food sovereignty initiatives. We explore the extent to which the network’s decentralized and farmer-led organizational structure; programming and services; promotion of diversified, organic, and agroecological farming systems; and political organizing and advocacy create broadly accessible and diverse pathways for resource-poor smallholders to build climate resilience. We find that the Magsasaka at Siyentipiko para sa Pag-Unlad ng Agrikultura’s (Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Development) polycentric governance approach directly addresses the root causes of vulnerability, particularly in working to reclaim farmer rights and control over resources, connecting local and global struggles, and revitalizing agrobiodiversity and place-based knowledge.
ISSN:2325-1026
2325-1026
DOI:10.1525/elementa.2020.00033