Partners

CIRAD

Centre de coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, is a public research organisation. The researchers involved belong to two Joint Research Units.

Firstly, the UMR MoISA has acquired a great deal of experience on the issue of sustainable development labels as instruments of governance of the agri-food system, as well as on alternative models of food supply and demand. Sylvaine Lemeilleur, a researcher in political economy at UMR MoISA and a member of the PGS committee of IFOAM - Organics International, is responsible for the scientific coordination of this project. Together with Hélène Ilbert, also an economist at UMR MOISA, they are supervising Claire Dorville's thesis on "Certifying quality on food markets through Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS): a commons-based approach", funded by the French Ministry of Research, in partnership with Nature & Progrès.

Secondly, UMR Innovation has extensive experience of quality labels, particularly geographical indications (GIs). Delphine Marie-Vivien, a legal researcher at UMR Innovation, is a specialist in the control and certification methods specific to these quality signs, described as territorialised intellectual commons, as well as in the governance of the organisations that manage these Geographical Indications. His legal expertise is an important quality when considering the operating methods and recognition of PGS. Nicolas Paget, a management researcher at UMR Innovation, specialising in the collective management of natural resources, with a focus on digital tools, is joining this research programme, particularly on the issues of consultation and collective choice within an intellectual commons.

INRAE

Allison Loconto, a sociologist at INRAE, the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, has been working for many years on voluntary sustainable development standards and conformity assessment systems. In particular, she studies the processes of intermediation, issues of accountability and institutional and social innovations such as PGS.

Nature & Progrès

Founded in 1964, Nature & Progrès is an association that brings together professionals - producers, processors and restaurateurs - and consumers in France to promote and strengthen organic and solidarity-based agriculture. As a result of the various public regulations governing organic farming, particularly in terms of the requirements for third-party certification, the organisation is unique in that it has maintained, out of conviction, a citizen-based participatory certification system for awarding the Nature & Progrès label. Over the last ten years, the association's membership has grown and now stands at 2,000 - half of whom are professionals - divided into 28 departmental groups. Nature & Progrès took part in the reformulation of the GSP principles coordinated by IFOAM - Organics International from 2004 onwards, and is constantly reflecting on its operations through annual exchanges between local groups. Nature & Progrès has also partnered with CIRAD to supervise a doctoral thesis since 2017.

Envirobat BDM

Envirobat BDM is an association of building and development professionals with around 300 members in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. Its aim is to better integrate sustainable development issues into the building and development process. For the past ten years, it has been spearheading the Bâtiments Durables Méditerranéens (BDM) initiative, an PGS supported by the Southern Region, ADEME and regional government departments. More than 500 buildings have been recognised under this scheme, and its success is growing all the time. Regional inter-professions have adopted the principles of this approach, giving rise to BDO in Occitanie, BDF in Ile-de-France and BDNA in Nouvelle Aquitaine (in progress), grouped within the Collectif des Démarches. While much of the association's work focuses on the technical aspects of sustainable building, in 2019 it has embarked on a study on the evaluation of sustainable building with its European partners (CESBA movement) "Procedure Sustainable neighbourhoods and buildings, participative guarantee system and European positioning. . An identity to defend, an identity to define".

SIMPLES

Created in 1986 in the Cévennes, SIMPLES (Syndicat Inter Massif pour la Production et l'Economie de Simples), aims to unite small-scale producers-gatherers of aromatic and medicinal plants around a common brand, defending the production of quality plants and the maintenance of environmentally-friendly small-scale farming. In 2019, Simples is represented throughout France by 10 massifs, 130 producers, 28 applicants and 430 supporters. The SIMPLES label is awarded annually following an PGS organised by the various producers in a given region. After several years' work, SIMPLES is now at the end of an overhaul of its specifications, its evaluation grids and the awarding of the label.

MIRAMAP

Created in 2010, MIRAMAP is the Interregional Movement of AMAPs. Its aim is to strengthen the cohesion of AMAPs by sharing a common ethic, pooling experiences and practices and representing and promoting AMAPs at national level. As the umbrella organisation for hundreds of AMAPs (around 2,000 AMAPs in 2019), farmers in AMAPs and around fifteen regional AMAP networks, and as the owner of the AMAP brand since 2015, the deployment of regional initiatives to guarantee the ethics of AMAPs is at the heart of current and future collective work. As part of this process, some AMAP networks have been adapting their PGS since 2009.

CERTIPAQ

Founded in 1996, CERTIPAQ is a network of regional inspection bodies, with 8 offices in France, Corsica and the French overseas departments and territories, and 170 member defence and management bodies (ODG). In addition to official signs (AOC, AOP, IGP, STG, Label Rouge, AB, non-food GI), Certipaq inspects a large number of private collective initiatives (HVE, Pêche durable, Bleu Blanc Coeur, etc). Particularly motivated by the development of Geographical Indications internationally, but also by the development of Organic Farming in France, Certipaq is convinced that the difficulties of adopting standards can be partly resolved by setting up PGS, because of their economic flexibility and their adaptability to territorial constraints.

LISODE

LISODE is a co-operative specialising in research engineering and training for consultation. It will be involved in the project as a third-party watchdog to ensure that the participatory research is well-balanced and works properly. Its experience and sound advice were greatly appreciated in the previous REPAIRS project.

MSH –sud

The project will benefit from the free hosting of the Maison de Sciences de l'Homme (MSH -sud) in Montpellier, for the organisation of its cycle of exchange days. This partnership will give rise to new exchanges and collaboration between the network and the MSH, which shares many of the project's concerns.

La Coop des Communs

The Coop des Communs
The aim of the Coop des Communs is to encourage the emergence and strengthening of initiatives and currents that are part of this dynamic of the commons, thanks to the support of the long and complex experience of the social and solidarity economy, in the hope of encouraging the perpetuation of the model of social, economic and cultural organisation that they represent together. This is being done by maintaining a community of people, working across boundaries, on the inter-relationships between players and between players and tools, and on action-research projects and programmes bringing together practitioners and researchers.

agropolis fondation

Agropolis International is an association under the law of 1901 created in Montpellier in 1986 by Louis Malassis and the research and higher education establishments of Montpellier involved in the thematic fields of agriculture, food, biodiversity and the environment.

Ademe

The Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Énergie (Environment and Energy Management Agency) is a French industrial and commercial public body set up in 1991. It is governed by law nᵒ 90-1130 of 19 December 1990 and decree nᵒ 91-732 of 26 July 1991.