Proposal of a principle cum scale analytical framework for analyzing agroecological development projects

Because agroecology has different meanings, it may be used in an arbitrary and potentially abusive way when deployed by development cooperation actors conceiving agroecology-based development projects. To make the appropriation of agroecology more transparent, we first review the recent attempts in academia to clarify the concept and identify two main trends: a principle-based agroecology and a series of different agroecologies. Based on a critical assessment of these attempts, we then propose a new framework to program, implement and analyze agroecological development projects: it distinguishes different agroecologies with their corresponding categories of principles and their scales of intervention. Further, we argue in favor of a specific category of methodological principles.