Overworld Paraguay

Carrera de Ingeniería en Ecología Humana, Universidad Nacional de Asunción

Department of Chemistry, Life Science and Environmental Sustainability - University of Parma

The project has two objectives, the results of which will be used to assess the level of sustainability of communities as a whole and for each sustainability dimension in a comparative manner, i.e. by comparing indicators for the rural communities identified in the study:

1. Building and testing a set of indicators to assess the sustainability of rural communities in Paraguay;
2. Calculate environmental, social and economic indicators for a group of selected rural communities in Paraguay to identify gaps and strategies for improvement.

Planned actions:

1. State of the art in sustainability assessment of rural communities. This includes a review of the literature, research and studies on sustainability assessment in rural areas.
2. Selection of sustainability indicators extrapolated from the literature covering the three dimensions of sustainability for rural communities.
3. Selection of case studies and methodology setting.
4. Data collection through on-site interviews.
5. Sustainability assessment. The set of sustainability indicators will be calculated from the data collected from the rural communities identified for this study. A cross-comparison of the results between the rural communities will be useful to rank the communities for each sustainability indicator and obtain information on the main sustainability factors.
6. Sustainability issues and proposals for improvement The results obtained in the comparative analysis of sustainability indicators combined with quantitative and qualitative information will make it possible to identify causal sustainability factors and to propose some improvement actions for rural communities in Paraguay.

The project was completed. Its results have been published in the following article:

Soldi, A., Aparicio Meza, M. J., Guareschi, M., Donati, M., & Insfrán Ortiz, A. 2019. Sustainability Assessment of Agricultural Systems in Paraguay: A Comparative Study Using FAO’s SAFA Framework. Sustainability, 11(13), 3745.

Currently, the collaboration with the Universidad Nacional de Asunción is active and aims to carry out projects concerning the sustainability of the local agri-food system, together with the Department of Economics and Business Sciences and the Department of Chemistry, Life Science and Environmental Sustainability of the University of Parma.