SHARP as part of the Forum Origin, Diversity and Territories, Turin, Italy (19 to 21 September)

10/10/2018

The Forum Origin, Diversity and Territories is a meeting point for an international community of practitioners, scientists and policy-makers to share ideas and develop strategies on the interactions between diversity and the territorial origin of agricultural and non-agricultural products. Its main object is to establish a long-term and cross-continental knowledge hub focussing on products’ Origin, Diversity and Territory.

The Forum has an important role in knowledge exchange and generation but also in the identification of gaps, where research should be deepened and synergies between stakeholders can be found. Moreover, the Forum has an advocacy role in positioning the question of product diversity and origin into public and private decision-making agendas. To do so, the Forum was organized this year in Turin, Italy from the 19 to 21 of September and it was divided into seven thematic workshops covering areas of study related to sustainable rural tourism, strategies and tools to manage territorial transitions, the promotion of origin-linked products by using tools (e.g. UNESCO-Wold Heritage or GIAHS), tools and innovations to build resilience, foodways as paths for sustainable development in rural areas, nutritional and food transitions and Smart Eco-Social Villages.

As part of the workshop on “Tools and innovations to build resilience of farmers and territories”, the different participants presented their tools, approaches and methods to assess resilience in different study areas and contexts. From FAO, Maria Hernandez Lagana and Suzanne Phillips presented the FAO-developed SHARP tool to assess resilience of complex farming systems. The new tablet-based application (SHARP+) was presented for the first time to a wide audience and the workshop served as an opportunity to share some examples and lessons learned on the use of the tool in the field, especially as part of several GEF-funded projects.

Some universities, as ETH-Zürich and the University of British Columbia, shared their experience using the SHARP tool to evaluate the resilience of food systems in Switzerland and the Philippines respectively. This workshop also served as a platform where researchers and practitioners had the chance to present innovative approaches for resilience building of food systems or value chains. Moreover, the use of these approaches was also discussed to better understand how they can be incorporated in project’s information systems, including monitoring and evaluation.

This workshop was an extraordinary opportunity to discuss with resilience experts on their professional and personal experiences and knowledge of resilience measurement and project implementation. The scope, context and approaches of the different studies are diverse and during the discussions it became clear, that due to the complexity of food systems there is no one-fits all solution for resilience measurement. Nevertheless, there are many similar aspects among the different approaches on which a comparison of resilience can be developed. At the end of the workshop, the participants agreed to explore future collaborations to find pathways for resilience building, with special focus on food systems. A potential streamline of research could centre on defining common resilience principles to increase comparability, transferability and reliability of data.