FRAMEWORK AND OBJECTIVES
Public policies help to create a social and political order, direct society, regulate tensions, integrate groups and resolve conflicts (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2018). Through their evolution, they express the transformations of democratic political models, but also the blocking of political regulation when faced with resistance and manipulation by economic and social actors. They are supposed to establish the conditions for the emergence of public actions led by local players.
What makes it interesting to talk about public action today is the mobilisation of an interesting prism that goes beyond a centralised model of government leading to sectoral actions. Public action takes place within a framework governed by a series of public policies and necessarily takes into account a set of interactions that act on several levels. These interactions result from a change in spatial scale, both globally and locally, but also transversally between these two levels, and also from the increased mobilisation of players, sources of expertise and discussion forums. Linking stakeholder networks and spatial scales supports a systemic approach to public action, without neglecting the specific circumstances and dynamics of each territory. For example, the capacity for action of stakeholders in a given area and the potential for change towards transition dynamics are very different depending on geographical location, ecological sensitivity, size, productive specialisation and density (urban/rural/peri-urban), etc.
Public policies are designed to provide a framework for sectors of activity or general issues, whereas initiatives will have to deal with several of these simultaneously. For example, an agri-food processing business that is set up in a locality will have to comply with standards and regulations (issued by the region, state or confederation of states) concerning environmental aspects, energy, staff training and pay, transport, product labelling and health regulations. If it continues a local agricultural activity, it will have to deal with agricultural policies to ensure its supply of raw materials, with the issues of land, agricultural orientation and pricing. What’s more, an initiative of this kind will have to position itself in relation to other operators in the area (small territories that may include municipalities, districts or regions) who are already involved in this activity, in order to move beyond competitive relationships (with suppliers as well as with final products and markets) and move towards cooperation that is crucial to its success, for example to build collective certifications.
Public action will bring together private players and public funding aimed at resolving the specific problems of local operators. They are quickly confronted with the question of how to overcome the multiplicity of standards and scales of action brought about by the fragmentation of public policies and the geography of local areas.
The aim of this workshop is to discuss the experiences and work that demonstrate the way in which territories understand and formalise public action, and also to gain a better understanding of the issues of governance in this multiplicity of experiences and approaches. To do this, we suggest approaching this set of questions from four angles: (i) Multi-level governance (ii) Cross-sectoral cooperation and exchange (iii) Inter-actor and inter-territory networks, what tools should be used? (iv) Skills and support tools.

Framework and Objective

While the impact of climate change on our lives is already visible, there is no longer any doubt that the frequency and intensity of exceptional climatic events will increase in the future. The territorialized food systems – supported by their actors – will have to find, like all the components of our societies, strategies, and answers to the challenges that climate change already poses to production, the characteristics and quality of products and yields, with possible consequences on the incomes of farmers and associated actors, but also on ecosystems, the expectations and needs of consumers and of society.

Faced with the need to adapt to environmental, climatic, economic, and social crises, farmers are progressively seeking to distinguish themselves by adapting their practices and the quality of their products to societal and consumer expectations, as well as to enhance their remarkable know-how, which often has a beneficial role in the conservation of natural and cultural resources. These strategies are carried out both at the individual level (farms) and collectively through producers’ organizations or sectors.

From this point of view, differentiation approaches are attracting growing interest. Indeed, these tools enable them to gain visibility and activate, through agricultural and food products, the propensity of consumers to better remunerate the services rendered by agriculture, to revitalize the biological and cultural heritage in the territories. Geographical indications (GIs), Slow Food Presidia: there are many ways of enhancing the value of agricultural and food products available to communities today. Among them, intellectual property protection tools such as GIs, which aim to enhance the value of products through a quality approach based on the link to their origin and supported by an official guarantee and protection system for consumers and producers, are being developed throughout the world. Other approaches such as World Heritage of Humanity, Biosphere Reserves, Globally important agricultural heritage systems, Mountain Partnership, aim to recognize the remarkable biological and cultural characteristics of an agricultural system in an approach oriented towards the conservation, promotion, adaptation, and transmission of the heritage associated with socio-ecosystems.

This rise in differentiation systems observed throughout the world is being questioned by the emergence of global issues such as the sustainable construction of systems and the consequences of climate change. In this context, to what extent are the systems for enhancing the value of traditional agricultural systems and their food products based on typicality, the link to the terroir, ancestral know-how and practices and remarkable socio-ecosystems capable of responding to the challenges of sustainable development or of better resisting climate disruption and/or contributing to the mitigation of these changes (by preserving or increasing biodiversity and associated resilience, by storing carbon, etc.).

To guide our workshop discussions, we will use the Brundtland Report’s definition of sustainable development: “Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Two concepts are inherent in this notion: the concept of “needs”, and more particularly the essential needs of the poorest, to whom the highest priority should be given, and the idea of the limitations that the state of our technology and social organization imposes on the capacity of the environment to meet present and future needs. As this definition is based on the impact of our generation on future generations, it directly implies our ability to respond to the challenges posed by climate change.

Workshop 1 of the 2022 edition of the forum will therefore be the place to share and reflect on the tools for assessing the sustainability of differentiation approaches in the context of climate change.