Armelle Mazé (p), Aida Calabuig Domenech , Isabelle Goldringer

Maryline Filippi

The development of peasant seed communities is a recent trend in European countries, bringing together professional farmers, city gardeners and other enlightened amateurs, as well as creating new interfaces between cities and rural areas. In this article, we analyze the role of knowledge governance in a leading French peer-to-peer peasant seed network as a major driver for reintroducing and maintaining cultivated agrobiodiversity and on-farm seed conservation of traditional and landrace varieties. Empirical data are based on a detailed network formalization and analysis of the governance rules. Our results highlight the various models of collective action and the organizational tradeoffs faced by opting out of peasant seed activities and in recreating a shared collective knowledge base about the benefits of maintaining cultivated agrobiodiversity. A number of policy implications and challenges are discussed regarding restrictive seed laws and the need for a more radical reorientation of R&D systems prioritizing alternative participatory driven models of grassroots innovation.

Joanna Koszewska (p)

Armelle Mazé

BACKGROUND : In Warsaw, in the context of a rapid urban growth and neoliberal planning regulations, conflicts appeared and gave rise to bottom-up processes, resisting fast changes. Jazdów is an example of a historic green zone where strategic planning failed. Since 2005, the Municipality has not managed to make the Master Plan binding, and, instead, a group of social protesters has been negotiating the program for Jazdów with the City representatives.

SCOPE : The aim of this article is to examine the evolution of this pioneering project and its outcomes. This contribution is concentrated on empirical results of the research.

METHOD : The process-orientated research of the project was conducted though qualitative interviews with local actors, participatory observation, site visits, literature and planning documents review.

STATEMENT : A regular planning procedure failed due to protests against the reorganization plan. This subversive act led to the formation of a civic partnership between the activists and the Municipality, which agreed to work collaboratively on a new plan. Even though statutory planning is difficult to change, the partnership managed to preserve this plot and protect its natural heritage and built monuments by sectorial actions of a small scale.

CONCLUSIONS : A soft way of influencing policies can be achieved by undertaking pilot projects, temporary use, or enriching local territorial governance. A mixed governing style might improve the quality of urban vision. The structured collaboration in urban planning between the public and civic sector as one of participation forms might improve practices in the preparation of master plans and their execution.

DISCUSSION : The chosen case represents a specific type of governance in the process of urban transformation. The questions to be addressed touch upon the common features of such governance as well as its specifics, depending on the social capital of the activists involved and the perennity of collaborative urban planning.

Etienne Polge (p), Jean-Bernard Marsat , Yves Michelin

Joanna Koszewska

We are face to new form of governance of commons in tension between development and protection emerging from the coexistence of management models. Nowadays a scale of management models of commons alongside the protected area management category of International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) can be identified from the most development-oriented model to the most protection-oriented model and from the most inclusive to the most exclusive model.
Some authorities and stakeholders coordinate themselves with as main objective economic valorization of commons in the limit of national legislation and eventually implementing protected area with sustainable use of natural resources (category VI of UICN). Regional natural park (RNP) model aims to promote protection of Landscape/Seascape (category V of UICN) and to involve municipalities and civil society in a horizontal manner; nature protection depends on the concertation and remains sometimes uncertain. National park (NP) model involves mainly one pubic administration of the park directly linked with national government in a vertical manner and aims to preserve natural site from human activities. In France, legal status of the NP and RNP became closer with the reform of NP in 2006 involving more the stakeholders and with the evolution of RNP strengthening its charter.
In the local situations, these models may not sum up the representations and the logics of all actors. This leads to innovate and invent specific territorial governance arrangements emerging from the coexistence of management models to make synergy between development and protection possible.
We will illustrate our communication through the analysis of the territorial governance arrangement of the “Chaines des Puys – Faille de Limagne” natural site – with different form of propriety and use - located within the Auvergne volcanos RNP and recently inscribed in UNESCO list of world heritage. Following other works on territorial governance and proximity dynamics (Polge et al., 2017, 2018), we will put forward the tension between the trend to verticalize the managment and the trend to strengthen the implication of stakeholders and citizens in the management of natural site considered as commons. We will point out how this last trend leads to the implementation of innovative territorial policies and to the emergence of new management models.

Maryline Filippi (p)

Enterprises are increasingly involved in enhancing sustainability and societal responsibility. This communication focus on agrifood cooperatives which drive the emergence of new forms of territorial development processes, more inclusive, sustainable and equitable. Farmers in cooperatives could organize new territorial systems in order to better valorize their products but also to guarantee sustainable goals takes into account the interests of all stakeholders and consumers. The background adopts the collective action and cooperative theories (Ostrom, 1990, Cook, 2018), proximity analysis (Pecqueur et Zimmerman, 2004; Torre and Wallet, 2014) and the shared value approach (Porter and Kramer, 2011). We propose a case study using an original French database covering all 186 agricultural cooperatives engaged in sustainable processes, including the 16 certified in ISO 26000 (Afnor 2018) and completed by manager’ interviewees. The results point out the role played by the Corporate Social Responsibility as a common good due to close interactions between stakeholders. The results show that (1) proximity with consumers is a major motivation in innovating and adopting sustainability practices, thereby rendering (2) local interactions essential in order to reconcile economic, environmental and social dimensions. We discuss the means used by cooperatives creating common goods towards more collective and participatory modes of exploitation, management of territorial resources and new form of territorial proximity.