The Seventh Forum of Mediterranean Beekeeping concludes with success, organized by FELCOS Umbria, ( Fund of Local Authorities for decentralized Coopeeration and for Sustainable Hhuman development), APIMED ( Mediterranean Beekeepers Federation) and INAT ( National Agronomic Institute of Tunisia ) , in partnership with UNDP ART Initiative and with the patronage of the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture, in the framework of the project “Mediterranean CooBEEration: a network for the beekeeping, biodiversity and food safety”.
The Forum was attended by about 300 participants among whom beekeepers, students, researchers, representatives of institutions of all levels and common citizens. About 50 delegates have also participated in the Forum, representatives of apicultural producers associations from nine mediterranean countries: Morocco, Algeria, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Italy.
It is an initiative that, beyond the technical and scientific aspects, assumes an important political value due to the context of tensions and difficulty that is putting a strain on the entire Mediterranean area. In fact, as stated by the international coordinator of the Mediterranean CooBEEration project “even more than a beekeepers forum, this was a meeting and dialogue place among Mediterranean men and women who want to cooperate, work side by side, exchanging ideas, knowledge and good practices to build an area of peace together and share well-being”.
During the Forum beekeeping, biodiversity, safeguard of the territory and honey quality were discussed. An interesting debate emerged about the relationship between scientific research and the sector of the apicultural production; specifically the necessity stated by the producers of addressing the research on concrete objectives, useful for the protection and strengthening of the beekeeping and the productions quality.
The main outcome of this seventh edition has been the presentation of the Mediterranean Honey Charter, drafted by the APIMED working group: “a historic document”, as stated by Vincenzo Panettieri, President of APIMED, “which contextualizes and defines Mediterranean honey for the first time under a profile of quality, adapting them to European standards, considered among the best in the world”. This will lay the foundation for a positive improvement of the apicultural sector, contributing to the enhancement of the socio-economic condition of the Mediterranean producers, but also to contain the preponderance of the big industrial groups present in the global market with products that are often of very low quality, or even fraudulent.
The Forum represents a new important stage of a long path aimed to promote the beekeeping and the sustainable development through the decentralized cooperation, started by FELCOS Umbria and the Umbrian Beekeepers Association (APAU), with the support of UNDP; from 2007/2008 with the cooperation interventions in Lebanon and Morocco where beekeeping was emerging as constant priority for the sustainable local development of certain areas. It was immediately clear that the beekeepers, coming from various countries, were facing common problems and challenges and that was necessary and useful to establish a network to exchange knowledge and good practices and find common solutions.
Progressively, during the years, this work increased and matured in a way which led to the creation of APIMED in 2011, the first existing Federation that currently gather 22 associations of apicultural producers in 12 countries of the Mediterranean area; in 2014 it became an international initiative with the approval and financing of the European Union of the Mediterranean CooBEEration, an international initiative that now involve five countries (Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Palestine, Algeria), as well as Italy.
Throughout the APIMED network, nine training and interchange missions were realized during these 22 months; two in Palestine, one in Lebanon, three in Tunisia, two in Algeria and one in Morocco. Moreover, an important course of introduction to melissopalynology was organized at the Department of Agricultural, Forestry and Food Sciences of the University of Turin, partner of the project, which enabled ten analysts and researchers, from the most important laboratories and research centers on honey of the five countries involved in the CooBEEration project, to become familiar with the microscopic analysis of pollen residuals in the honeys as a fundamental instrument for a promotion strategy of the honeys.
Before this Tunis edition, the Mediterranean CooBEEration project allowed, furthermore, the realization of the Fifth Mediterranean beekeeping Forum, held in Foligno in November 2014, and of the Lebanese beekeeping National Forum (may 2015). The next edition of the Mediterranean assembly will be held in Morocco at the end of 2016.
During the first day of the Forum, the CooBEEration video was presented for the first time at international level, in Arabic and French version, core of a big awareness campaign aimed to disseminate a new vision of the beekeeping as a Global Common Good.
Articoli correlati
Informe Regional sobre Desarrollo Humano para América Latina y el Caribe 2016Progreso multidimensional: bienestar más allá del ingreso
Articulation of Territorial Networks
for Sustainable Human
Development