On 26 May 2025, SECORES organized a symposium to discuss how international cooperation actors can improve harmony, strengthen synergies and reduce tensions between ‘social’ and ‘ecological’ objectives in international cooperation programs.
The seminar started with a short reminder on SECORES and some key concepts as social-ecological resilience and the social-ecological resilience approach; ecological ceiling linked to planetary boundaries and social foundation; the 4 axes on which SECORES members work.
The keynote was presented by Dr. Manuel Pacheco-Romero on “Advancing social-ecological systems thinking in development cooperation projects“. It was built around three key recommendations to trigger reflection on how to continue improving the incorporation of a social-ecological approach in international cooperation projects. The keynote aimed to bring some tools to put this in practice in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of your projects. These recommendations revolve around 3 pathways:
- apply social-ecological systems thinking retrospectively and prospectively;
- use resilience principles and the capital assets framework to enhance and monitor social-ecological resilience; and
- embrace systems’ dynamism and go beyond resilience thinking, which include: from static characterization to dynamic social-ecological approaches; and mainstreaming regenerative dynamics for sustainability.
Concluding remarks of the keynote were:
- The importance of developing systematic social-ecological assessments, both post hoc and ad hoc, helps us learn what has worked and why in our projects, and to deeply understand the social-ecological context where we are working.
- For this purpose, it is fundamental to build a common framework for project assessment, that performs as a boundary object to communicate between NGOs, and that at the same time can be adapted to the particularities of each project.
- In addition, the resilience principles and the capital assets framework are powerful tools to analyse strategies to cope with disturbances, to develop future measures that better harmonize social and ecological objectives when building resilience.
- It is also fundamental to embrace dynamism to account for changes in social and ecological objectives in cooperation projects through time as the context situation evolves, through adaptive approaches, continued monitoring and redefinition of goals.
- Finally, the regenerative systems framework may help us think not only on how to remain resilient in the face of poly-crisis, but also on how to leverage the poly-opportunities that may arise if positive dynamics can be reinstated across multiple, interacting social-ecological domains.
After the keynote, 4 testimonies from the field explained how to put this harmony between social and ecological objectives into practice: 2 from SECORES members and 2 from other networks.
A documentary produced by Via Don Bosco and partners in Bolivia shows how young people, while preparing for work, are also being trained as ecologically responsible citizens and professionals. Teachers and students measure their footprint to understand it and they act. It’s about ecological ethics, transforming technical knowledge into sustainable solutions, changing habits. Besides concrete actions, students also inform and make others enthusiast. They investigate how to reduce waste, energy consumption, use of chemical products, etc. Inside and between Don Bosco institutions in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, there is a major commitment to integrate ecology. The multi-country reflection on how to do this included teachers and young people with an integrated approach in some pilot centres. Finally, it’s about generating agents of change in society. Click here to view this documentary.
Vincent Hénin from Louvain Coopération on behalf of Uni4Cooop explained how they work on social-ecological resilience in mangroves linking social and environmental aspects combining several objectives:
- to strengthen the social fabric, local capacities, and livelihoods (local governance and participation; economic empowerment & inclusion; capacitation & sustainability);
- to preserve essential natural functions and strengthen capacities for adaptation to the climate (restoration and conservation; scientific monitoring and data-driven management; ecosystem services);
- including an Inclusive Knowledge Management mechanism providing essential information for conservation and management decision-making
Irina Meeusen on behalf of the Coordination Platform for Decent Work treated the question: “How to reconciliate decent work and resilience to climate change by just transition?”. After explaining definition of “just transition”, she spoke about just transition policies and measures. The need and urgency for a just transition is already included in several international agreements (both on mitigation and adaptation). But just transition needs to be an integral part of the sustainable development policy framework, and to align with the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda and its four pillars while integrating gender equality transversally. How to do this? Via decent green job creation and reskilling; social protection being key to addressing lifecycle and other risks, and to facilitate work and life transitions; (c) a labour rights approach; (d) an inclusive approach – “Leave no one behind”.
Finally, Suzy Serneels, Broederlijk Delen on behalf of Coalition Against Hunger, presented “agroecology as a framework for reconciling agriculture, nature and social aspects”. After outlining the challenges (multidimensional poverty with 78% of poor people living in rural areas and malnutrition being a global problem; and food systems and agriculture contributing to crossing of ecological boundaries), she explained how agroecology gives an alternative vision using relationship between humans, agriculture and nature. The aim is to interact with and learn from nature instead of fighting against it.
- Sustainable foods systems based on agroecology include sustainable, diverse, resilient production; autonomy for farmers; co-creation of knowledge; local markets, short chains; and supporting legal framework and policies.
- Agroecology is a set of practices including circular economy, close relation between producer and consumer: farmers’ markets, on farm sales, community supported agriculture; fair prices, healthy products, respect and trust; alternative economies, cooperation and power relations.
- Agroecology is also a social movement.
The symposium ended with a debate, led by John Vandaele from MO* Magazine, addressing questions as
- the need to create jobs, especially for youth, to have an income and the difficult to access markets for rural communities;
- the importance to support regeneration of biodiversity;
- the need, but also the difficulty to change old practices; without putting all the responsibility on farmers and therefore paying sufficient attention to policy changes;
- the different levels to work on: both project level as starting point and as input for social-ecological change on a higher, societal level; the necessity to combine bottom-up approaches upscaling good examples with input and encouragement from policy level; this implies systemic changes because development cooperation is changing very quickly and there is a huge need to have more coherence in policies;
- the need, when speaking about social-ecological resilience, for alternative parameters instead of GDP growth;
- how to avoid excluding certain groups of people when working on agroecology.
