Suchergebnisse

Soaring of food prices in 2007/08 has put again food security high in the global agenda. Several elements of explanation have been put forward to explain this crisis, including traditional ones such as imbalance supply/demand and stocks, energy effect, dollar effect\; and new factors such as biofuels, financial speculation and low interest rates, export bans. Various arguments linked to this food crisis have also questioned the global nature of food security issue : global insecurity (with the urban food riots), humanitarian (with the worsening situation of the bottom billion), cross-sectoral (with the relationships between agriculture and other related issues such as environment, health, trade rules and market impacts, etc.). Several initiatives have insisted on the need to address more seriously the problem at the global level. Indeed, lack of global coordination on food security has been recognized as a major problem. This lack of coordination could be understood both at the substantive level (i.e. between the different issue-areas which are part of the food security problem) and at the institutional level (i.e. between the different international organizations in charge of food security) leading to the fragmentation of global food security governance. This paper respectively analyses these two dimensions of fragmentation in order to assess the extent to which current global initiatives better address coordination needs for global food security.

Adopted during the first International Congress of Ethnobiology (1988), the Belem Declaration acknowledged for the first time biologists' responsibility to better address the needs of indigenous and local populations and recommended compensating them for the utilization of their biological resources and knowledge. Since then, the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) and its recently adopted Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing (2010), along with the International Treaty of the FAO (2001), have generalized the principle of channeling returns-whether monetary or non-monetary-back to a range of designated groups, whether bilaterally or through collective means such as a benefitsharing fund. These principles are implemented through a set of mechanisms such as prior informed consent or material transfer agreements that formalize the practices of access, exchange and use of genetic resources and associated knowledge. The current contribution aims to analyze the effect that these regulations have on scientists' behavior related to the acquisition and contribution of genetic resources for food and agriculture (GRFA). The paper explores in particular the connection between the importance of genetic diversity in scientists' research activities and GRFA sourcing strategies and behavior. The analysis goes beyond current research to examine institutional, economic, and attitudinal explanations for patterns in scientists' use of genebanks. It is based on a survey that covers GRFA exchange and use practices in two different countries (US and France) and four different types of organizations (university, national research institute, company, and government). The analysis covers individual as well as project level, such that it is possible to investigate some portion of the collaborative network of the scientists, their exchange behavior and the institutional context within which they conduct research. Findings will inform current understanding about access, exchange and use behavior of researchers. Conclusions will discuss implications for practice and policy.

Farmers have engaged in collective systems of conservation and innovation – improving crops and sharing their reproductive materials – since the earliest plant domestications. Relatively open flows of plant germplasm attended the early spread of agriculture; they continued in the wake of (and were driven by) imperialism, colonization, emigration, trade, development assistance and climate change. As crops have moved around the world, and agricultural innovation and production systems have expanded, so too has the scope and coverage of pools of shared plant genetic resources that support those systems. The range of actors involved in their conservation and use has also increased dramatically. This book addresses how the collective pooling and management of shared plant genetic resources for food and agriculture can be supported through laws regulating access to genetic resources and the sharing of benefits arising from their use. Since the most important recent development in the field has been the creation of the multilateral system of access and benefit-sharing under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, many of the chapters in this book will focus on the architecture and functioning of that system. The book analyzes tensions that are threatening to undermine the potential of access and benefit-sharing laws to support the collective pooling of plant genetic resources, and identifies opportunities to address those tensions in ways that could increase the scope, utility and sustainability of the global crop commons.

International audience ; Application of the open source concept to seeds has a promising future. It reverses the logic of the intellectual property system with a renewable stock of open source material kept outside the exclusive intellectual property realm. Legal defensibility may currently be uncertain, but as open source builds a critical mass of practitioners and supporters, wider social legitimacy could strengthen the legal power. Future extension to other subject matter and settings is discussed on the basis of lessons learnt from current open source seed implementation experience in the US, Europe and Africa.

International audience ; Le concept d'open source appliqué aux semences végétales a un avenir prometteur. Ce concept inverse la logique du système de propriété intellectuelle pour une ressource renouvelable que l'on rend disponible en la sortant du domaine exclusif de la propriété intellectuelle. Aujourd'hui, les instruments juridiques font encore défaut pour établir un cadre légal complet. Toutefois, le concept d'open source, que l'on pourrait traduire ici par licence libre et ouverte, engendre au fil du temps une masse critique d'utilisateurs et de soutiens qui entraîne une légitimité sociale grandissante. À terme, cette légitimité pourrait renforcer le pouvoir juridique. L'extension future à d'autres matériels dans différents contextes doit être réfléchie en s'appuyant sur les expériences actuelles de semences sous licences libres et ouvertes conduites aux États-Unis, en Europe et en Afrique.

International audience ; Application of the open source concept to seeds has a promising future. It reverses the logic of the intellectual property system with a renewable stock of open source material kept outside the exclusive intellectual property realm. Legal defensibility may currently be uncertain, but as open source builds a critical mass of practitioners and supporters, wider social legitimacy could strengthen the legal power. Future extension to other subject matter and settings is discussed on the basis of lessons learnt from current open source seed implementation experience in the US, Europe and Africa.

International audience ; Le concept d'open source appliqué aux semences végétales a un avenir prometteur. Ce concept inverse la logique du système de propriété intellectuelle pour une ressource renouvelable que l'on rend disponible en la sortant du domaine exclusif de la propriété intellectuelle. Aujourd'hui, les instruments juridiques font encore défaut pour établir un cadre légal complet. Toutefois, le concept d'open source, que l'on pourrait traduire ici par licence libre et ouverte, engendre au fil du temps une masse critique d'utilisateurs et de soutiens qui entraîne une légitimité sociale grandissante. À terme, cette légitimité pourrait renforcer le pouvoir juridique. L'extension future à d'autres matériels dans différents contextes doit être réfléchie en s'appuyant sur les expériences actuelles de semences sous licences libres et ouvertes conduites aux États-Unis, en Europe et en Afrique.

International audience ; Application of the open source concept to seeds has a promising future. It reverses the logic of the intellectual property system with a renewable stock of open source material kept outside the exclusive intellectual property realm. Legal defensibility may currently be uncertain, but as open source builds a critical mass of practitioners and supporters, wider social legitimacy could strengthen the legal power. Future extension to other subject matter and settings is discussed on the basis of lessons learnt from current open source seed implementation experience in the US, Europe and Africa.

This paper rethinks the governance of genebanks in a social and political context that has significantly evolved since their establishment. The theoretical basis for the paper is the commons conceptual framework in relation to both seed and plant genetic resources. This framework is applied to question the current policy ecosystem of genetic research and breeding and explore different collective governance models. The concept of crop diversity management system (CDMS) commons is proposed as the new foundation for a more holistic and inclusive framework for crop diversity management, that covers a broad range of concerns and requires different actors. The paper presents a multi-stakeholder process established within the context of the two recent projects CoEx and Dynaversity, imagining possible collective arrangements to overcome existing deadlocks, foster collective learning, and design collaborative relationships among genebanks, researchers, and farmers' civil society organizations involved in crop diversity management.

The Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is an independent scientific body focused on assessing the state of the world's ecosystem services and biodiversity. IPBES members agreed in 2017 that a review of the Platform's first work programme should be undertaken by an independent panel examining all aspects of IPBES' work – including implementation of the four functions of IPBES; policies, operating principles and procedures; governance structure and arrangements; communication, stakeholder engagement and partnerships; and funding mechanisms. The review found that for IPBES to have its anticipated transformative impact: All four functions of IPBES (i.e. assessment, knowledge generation, policy support, capacity building), with better communication, must be significantly strengthened, integrated and delivered together; The policy aspects of IPBES work need to be strengthened and greater emphasis needs to be placed on the co-design and co-production of assessments; A more strategic and collaborative approach to stakeholders is needed; and IPBES must develop a more sustainable financial base. Given those changes, IPBES, as an embryonic boundary organization, can become the key influencing organization in the global landscape of biodiversity and ecosystem services organizations, helping thus to catalyze transformative change in the relationship between people and the rest of nature.