Local Food-System Emerging from a Co-Governance Model: Shared Management and Community Knowledge in Mértola, Portugal.

This paper presents the findings of a research carried out on the model of co-governance that took place in the municipality of Mértola (Alentejo Region, Portugal), allowing the community and organisations to move towards both the constitution of a local food system and biodiversity regeneration. This case study is part of the EU-funded project “BioTraCes: Biodiversity and Transformative Change for plural and nature-positive societies”. Mértola is a rural municipality in the Baixo Alentejo region of southern Portugal, known for its semi-arid landscapes, rich cultural heritage, and low population density. It faces some of the most acute ecological and socio-economic pressures in the country: high susceptibility to desertification, chronic water scarcity, severe soil degradation, and the compounded impacts of decades of intensive monoculture, unsustainable grazing, and past mining activities. The evaluation of biodiversity regeneration strategies reveals a layered and dynamic landscape of experimentation, shaped by a strong commitment to co-governance, ecological learning, and systemic transformation. A set of organisations has contributed to building an atmosphere of co-governance, consolidating a concerted action towards a regenerative process, with particular attention to the establishment of a locally-grown healthy food system. One of the key arenas where this articulation happens is the Mértola Food Network (MFN), a participatory governance platform that brings together diverse stakeholders around the shared goal of building a sustainable and inclusive local food system. The MFN functions both as a space for experimentation - such as testing local distribution schemes - and as a forum for shared decision-making that brings together scientific, traditional, and experiential knowledge. This articulation goes beyond the MFN itself, linking to a broader constellation of projects aimed at climate adaptation, biodiversity regeneration, and social resilience that play a pivotal role within the Mértola Future Lab - a community strategy for territorial innovation linked to ecological transition. Whereas educational initiatives foster food sovereignty and ecological literacy into schools, regenerative grazing and syntropic agriculture projects seek to restore degraded soils. At the same time, intermunicipal collaborations are advancing the creation of a cross-border “food basin,” designed to secure healthy and accessible food for regional residents. Grounded on a discussion on community economies (Gibson-Graham, 2006; Lucas dos Santos & Banerjee, 2019), transformative change (IPBES, 2019) and environmental governance (Berkes, 2017), this paper aims to reflect upon the process of building up a co-governance model. We seek to answer the following questions: 1. Have the concerted action of local organisations enabled advances towards a healthy local-based food system, as expected by the municipality? 2. Have the strategies associated with the creation of a food system managed to break lock-ins related to biodiversity regeneration? 3. To what extent was it possible to stimulate a co-governance model and foster the proper recognition of the community knowledge, particularly the one brought by the elderly women in the village and surrounding areas? This abstract was written by four researchers: Luciane Lucas dos Santos, Fernanda Belizário, Letícia Renault and Gabriela Rocha