Diversity & Development is a NGO based in Montpellier (France), it promotes acknowledgement and appraisal of biological and cultural diversity as an agent for inclusion, innovation and sustainability.
We seek to achieve this through three articulated strategic axes:
- Learning networks development
- Research – Action
- Governance and territorial development
In 2011, D & D co-founded the “Biocultural Diversity and Territories Platform”, a group of institutions, organizations and people that strive for biocultural diversity appraisal as a relevant strategy to boost territorial dynamics that are sustainable, inclusive, competitive and resilient. Cheered by a long term objective guided to empower rural communities with fewer opportunities. Partners share know-how and contact networks in Latin America, Europe, Africa and other world regions.
In this framework, the platform:
• Boosts and accompanies research processes applied to promotion and appraisal of natural and cultural resources, local alimentary heritage and gastronomy, knowledge, identities and other tangible and intangible culture expressions.
• Creates new knowledge, systematizes and spreads good practices oriented to conservation and value of biocultural diversity, agroecological management of natural resources and strategies for adaptation and resilience towards climate change.
• Carries out activities of education and formation, boosting systematic processes of expansion of capacities, guided to territorial governance and the innovative management of cultural and natural assets.
• Stimulates the enforcement of territorial business networks and public/private coalitions that help maximize the comparative and competitive advantages offered by biocultural diversity.
• Places the subject within the public agenda to extend its action and incidence ratio.
http://www.diversidadbioculturalyterritorios.org/
https://www.facebook.com/Bioculturaldev
Since 2013, D & D has hosted the annual forum “Origin, Diversity and Territory”, that gathers FAO, UNIDO, WIPO, UNESCO, international research centers as CIRAD, IRD, INRA, universities, local and international NGOs to exchange experiences about territorial heritage appraisal.
Since 2014, D&D takes part in initiatives of higher education about the same subjects of SUS-TER project, like University Diplomas of Territorial Development and Cultural Identity with RIMISP – Latin American Center for Rural Development, Universidad Nacional of Medellín, Universidad Austral of Chile and the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Peru.
D&D developed and applied the “Learning Routes”, capacitation methodologies introduced by PROCASUR to build knowledge bridges between professionals, local leaders and researchers of ALC and the Mediterranean, learning better practices and exchanging innovations in the field.
Recently, with the INSUCO company and support from the Swiss Cooperation, D&D built a guide to measure socio environmental impacts of the Geographic indications in Colombia, and took part in the research project about intangible heritage appraisal of the Mediterranean Diet, funded by the South Med initiative of the European Union.
Based on its international and latin american experience and on the Biocultural Diversity and Territories Platform experience, D&D will be responsible of the Work package 8 and thus will coordinate:
1.The communication and spread plan of SUS-TER, in its several strategic approaches.
2. The building and/or enforcement of spread networks and result appropriation of SUS-TER. In such a way it will support linkages between universities partnered to the project and other external actors, firstly within countries with SUS-TER coverage, but also in others with a logic for the scaling of the project proposal. However, specifically, D&D will support the WP5 aiming to organize territorial laboratories, face-to-face modules aligned to the curricular structure of the territorial energizer’s profile.
It will also contribute to WP6 in aspects associated with monitoring-evaluation and derived learnings of the SUS-TER project.