Case Study Linking responsible research and...

Case Study Linking responsible research and innovation on the farm: the case of participatory guarantee sys-tems.

Allison Loconto

L'unité de recherche INRA SenS

Contact: Allison Loconto: [email protected]

Preparation date: July 2013

Document version: final

Justification and Rationale:

One of today’s societal grand challenges is the need to move toward more sustainable agricul-

tural practices in order to be able to feed a growing population in a world of diminishing re-

sources.1 There are currently a number of ways to transition to sustainability, ranging from

integrated agro-ecosystem techniques to the use of advanced micro-biological and bio-

chemical technologies. The research for sustainable agriculture occurs both in public and pri-

vate laboratories and on farms. The innovation process can be the classic ‘diffusion of innova-

tion’ model through extension services, or it can be an iterative, multi-stakeholder process

around innovation platforms within value chains. Within this landscape, many innovators rely

upon market mechanisms and use voluntary standards to govern changes in the adoption of

1 FAO. 2011. Save and Grow: A policymaker's guide to sustainable intensification of smallholder production. Rome:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

mailto:[email protected]

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sustainable agriculture technologies.2 These approaches seek to create closer linkages be-

tween multiple stakeholders in defining, controlling, and implementing more responsible re-

search and innovation for sustainable agriculture. This case is of interest to RES-AGorA because

it explains a ‘grassroots’ innovation whereby responsibility is found in the rearrangement of

the actors who take responsibility for innovation processes. It also describes a de facto rri

mechanism for governing the assurance of sustainable practices. Moreover, this case study

provides international comparisons of responsibilisation and well-doing based on the explora-

tion of six separate case examples. This type of comparison helps us to better understand the

conditions under which ‘shared understandings of responsibilities’ are developed in sustaina-

ble value chains.

Methodology:

This case study is being carried out in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization

of the United Nations (FAO) under the INRA/FAO project entitled: “Responsible innovation in

sustainable agri-food systems: Explorations of the intersections between voluntary standards

and value chains.” The method consisted of a call for case study proposals on institutional in-

novations in linking sustainable practices with markets in developing countries. We received

87 proposals, from which we selected 15 cases written by the innovative actors/organizations.

Of these 15 cases of institutional innovations, there are 6 cases that describe Participatory

Guarantee Systems (PGS) (Bolivia, Colombia, India, Namibia, the Philippines and Uganda). The

data collection and analysis is based on an iterative, qualitative approach where the original

drafts of the cases are used for textual evidence to analyze in terms of the actor’s perceptions

of responsibility in their innovation processes and the contestations that they are managing.

Interviews have been conducted with each of the innovators and field visits to four sites were

conducted between February and July 2014 in order to understand to what extent there is a

productive transformation of ‘well-doing’. In the two cases where field visits were not con-

ducted, peer-review by a local expert and secondary literature was used to contextualize the

PGS cases within broader discussions of responsibility and voluntary standards as instruments

of governance. Annex 1 presents an analysis of how each of the individual cases demonstrates

various dimensions of the research model. In the sections below we discuss the trends seen

across the six cases and illustrate specific de facto governance dynamics through the descrip-

tion of the Bolivian case.

2 SKASC. 2012. Toward sustainability: The roles and limitations of certification. Prepared by the Steering Committee of the State-of-Knowledge Assessment of Standards and Certification (SKASC). Washington, DC: RESOLVE, Inc.

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RRI governance arrangements

The research and innovation (R&I) characteristics of these cases can be described as regulating

market dynamics of innovation processes, specifically governing responsibility in value chains.

All six of the governance arrangements consist of a mix of instruments including private soft

regulation (private standards) and public voluntary laws and directives. The systems of en-

forcement of these instruments are formal institutional structures in two cases (Bolivia and

India) and informal institutional structures based on privately established procedures in the

others. Specifically, the enforcement mechanism is the participatory guarantee system (PGS).

PGS are networks created within local communities and consist of farmers, experts, public

sector officials, food service agents, and consumers. “They certify producers based on active

participation of stakeholders and are built on a foundation of trust, social networks and

knowledge exchange.”3 The role of this type of network is to create a local system of produc-

tion and consumption whereby multiple stakeholders experiment with sustainable agriculture

technologies on farms,4 but also collectively ensure that the techniques are adopted by setting

standards and verifying their compliance (i.e., the governance arrangements).5 PGS serve to

provide a direct guarantee, through the formation of a market, for sustainably produced food

and agriculture products. PGS therefore both ensure the diffusion of the innovation and are

the means through which the innovation process is governed. PGS as a rri governance ar-

rangement is not necessarily positioned in the wider R&I & RRI governance landscape, but

rather within the governance landscape of the agriculture sector with vertical links to either

national or international principle-based standards for organic. These international and na-

tional standards are a result of international collaboration among numerous local PGS working

in a bottom-up innovation process. This is evident in the Colombia, Indian, and Philippines

cases. However, we also see a top-down diffusion of innovation approach being used to repli-

cate PGS from the international level back down to the local level. We find evidence of this in

the Bolivian, Namibian and Ugandan cases.

The purpose of the PGS as a governance arrangement in the six cases can be characterized in

two ways: first as a reaction to an existing RRI governance arrangement for agricultural tech-

nologies and second as the framing of the problem of unsustainable agriculture. The purpose

of PGS as a reaction to controversy over existing governance arrangements dates back to the

experiments in organic agriculture in the 1970s in the US, France, Japan and Brazil and were

3 Official IFOAM PGS Definition, accessed 15 February 2014, http://www.ifoam.org/en/value-chain/participatory-guarantee-systems-pgs

4 Rosegrant, Mark W, Jawoo Koo, Nicola Cenacchi, Claudia Ringler, Richard Robertson, Myles Fisher, Cindy Cox, Karen Garrett, Nicostrato D Perez, and Pascale Sabbagh. 2014. Food security in a world of natural resource scarcity : the role of agricultural technologies. Wash-ington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

5 IFOAM. 2008. Participatory Guarantee Systems: Case studies from BRAZIL, INDIA, NEW ZEALAND, USA and FRANCE. Bonn, Germany: International Forum for Organic Agricul-ture Movements (IFOAM).

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one of the original ways in which organic agriculture techniques were controlled before the

third-party certification (3PC) model became dominant. As of 2014, PGS are found in 26 coun-

tries around the world. In developing countries they arose in response to protestations against

the dominant paradigm of standard-setting by corporate and Northern NGO and corporate

actors who use third-party certification systems that were seen as too costly for many small-

scale producers and not applicable to local agro-ecological and socio-technical conditions.

The currently used PGS governance framework was first established in a workshop in Latin

America in 2004, where international non-governmental actors (e.g. IFOAM,6 the Latin Ameri-

can Organic Agriculture Movement, Centro Ecologico in Torres, Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil)

convened to develop a “Shared Vision and Shared Ideals” for PGS around the world. This

shared vision focuses on the development of organic agriculture technologies and commit-

ment to developing a local economy and community. PGS are meant to be used by small and

medium sized farmers and not by large agri-businesses. Farmers sign a pledge when they join a

PGS. In this shared vision the differentiation of PGS from the 3PC model is clear:

In stark contrast to existing certification programs that start with the idea that farmers must prove they are in compliance to be certified, PGS programs use an integrity based approach that starts with a foundation of trust. It builds from there with an unparalleled transparency and openness, maintained in an environment that minimizes hierarchies and

administrative levels.7

All of the actors in these cases who are promoting PGS contest the ‘detached’ compliance ap-

proach of third-party certification and focus their governance efforts on mechanisms of ‘social

control’. The notion of responsibility in the general model of PGS is in the development of ‘hor-

izontal’ systems based on ‘peer-review’, sharing and rotating responsibility, and transparent,

participatory, decision-making processes.

The purpose of the governance arrangement can be identified through the framing processes,

which call attention to the creation and manipulation of the meanings and issues at stake in

the innovation process, as well as how a technology or a set of sustainable agriculture technol-

ogies is positioned within the dominant socio-technical regime. In our cases, we identify a

number of frames that are used to establish innovators as different from the conventional

regime – thus solutions to the problems of unsustainable agriculture – and frames that are

used to establish the means to achieve their desired ends. In terms of definitional framing

(DF), which establishes the core identity for the actors, we find that there are contestations

over what organic agriculture means. We can divide our cases geographically and we find that

the Latin American cases insist on a notion of agro-ecology, which includes a concept of food

sovereignty and the promotion of a local economy. In the Bolivian case, it is defined as having

6 International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements.

7 Inger Källander 2008. Participatory Guarantee Systems – PGS. Stockholm: Swedish Society for Nature Conservation. (p. 7)

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the following dimensions: “1) technological or productive, 2) social/cultural, 3) environmental,

4) economic and 5) political”. In contrast, organic is used to refer to a weaker form of agro-

ecology that is focused on the export markets and international organic standards. These de-

bates were also present in Africa and Asia but these innovators did not mind identifying them-

selves as organic as opposed to agro-ecological. In the case of India, this is because the nation-

al “standards for organic production are geared towards specificities in India e.g. use of Ayur-

veda and Unani medicine systems in agriculture.” Nonetheless, in these cases we found that

the actors were not focused only on local markets but were also integrated into export-

oriented value chains.

These definitional frames are accompanied by declared ‘purposes’ for a transition to a sustain-

able future. We can characterise these frames in terms of how actors explained the goals of

their activities. The most prominent theme relates to health and safety, specifically in terms of

safe food, consumer health and nutrition, and producer/worker health and safety. In India and

Namibia, there are nation-wide concerns over the excessive use of pesticides in conventional

agriculture. Therefore the concept of ‘safe food’ carries a lot of traction with consumers who

are looking for food that poses minimal risks to their health. In Bolivia and Uganda safety was

expressed in terms of ‘safe food’ but also in terms of the safety of the farmers who must han-

dle synthetic inputs. In these three countries, concerns for farmers’ health were linked with

consumer interest in nutrition. Here, consumers seek organic food also because the organic

farmers are growing difficult to find varieties of fruits and vegetables that are known to have

nutritional benefits.

Community livelihood promotion was highlighted in the Philippines because it is a community-

initiated project that is focused primarily on a community-based market development. Finally,

the Bolivian and Colombian cases have the objective of food sovereignty for producers. Food

sovereignty is part of the public debate in both countries where it is enshrined in the Bolivian

constitution, and thus the innovation works to provide a means to achieve official policy. In

Colombia food sovereignty is hotly contested where official policy does not take it into account

and thus the innovation plays an oppositional role by promoting it.

Each of the cases offers a slightly different solution to the problem of sustainable agriculture,

but we do see that each of these frames responds to debates that are circulating in national

and international debates over sustainable agriculture. This provides evidence for the ex-

tremely contextual nature of these PGS. Nonetheless, we can characterize the PGS governance

arrangements as a reaction to controversies around food sovereignty and external expert con-

trol over practices.

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Actor landscape

We see small-scale producers, individual consumers, municipal level government officials,

NGOs, donors, university faculty, and local private enterprises involved in PGS. Most roles are

collaborative in conscious attempts to maintain the system and the capacities and capabilities

of actors to relate to the dimension of responsibility and to engage in debates and negotia-

tions depends on their knowledge and resources. For example, the actors undergo significant

training in both the agricultural technologies and their responsible use as a foundational as-

pect of the PGS model. There are resource constraints (time and money) both for building ca-

pacity to enforce these governance systems and for actively engaging in debates at local, na-

tional and international levels. For this reason, the construction of networks is fundamental for

enabling actors to transform the problems that they have framed into actionable solutions by

mobilising actors, isolating themselves from conventional industries, and freeing themselves

from some of the institutional constraints that constrict their growth.8

We see horizontal network construction occurring as a way to build cohesiveness within the

group. This means that actors are enrolled and entangled as part of the core group of actors

promoting the innovation. In all cases producers are the core group of actors, but what differ-

entiates these innovations from conventional farmer groups or cooperatives is how producers

are engaging with researchers, government officials, private companies, community members

and consumers. In these horizontal relationships we see both market-based relationships and

collective commitments between non-market actors. We see the emergence of a number of

new hybrid actors, where responsibilities for different activities in the network emerge. The

hybrid actors that we identify are consumer-citizens, farmer-experts, producer-auditors, pro-

ducer-consumers, and producer-marketers. These hybrids capture how actors to take on mul-

tiple roles and identities in their networks. Producer-consumers are found in Bolivia, Colombia,

and Uganda where there is a primary focus on producing crops first for the farmers’ own con-

sumption and then for the local market. Farmer-experts, producer-auditors and producer-

marketers are all ways to describe the changes in the roles of farmers in the Bolivian, Indian,

Namibian and Philippine networks. We see clearly the role of learning and knowledge ex-

change as producers take on more responsibilities beyond food production. Finally, there is an

element of responsibilisation occurring in the Bolivian, Colombian and Namibian networks

where we see consumer-citizens9 who join the horizontal networks not only to consume or-

ganic food, but to also promote the social and political mission of the PGS. For example, in

Bolivia the director of the government agency in charge of regulating the organic standards

8 Timothy J. Hargrave and Andrew H. Van De Ven, "A Collective Action Model of Institutional Innovation," Academy of Management Review 31, no. 4 (2006).

9 See: Gert Spaargaren, "Theories of Practices: Agency, Technology, and Culture: Exploring the Relevance of Practice Theories for the Governance of Sustainable Consumption Practices in the New World-Order," Global Environmental Change 21, no. 3 (2011).

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systems in the country (UC-CNAPE) noted that “the PGS committees at the municipal level are

going to be platforms for questions about agro-ecology in the future.”

Vertical network construction is used to create external alliances that ensure access to markets

and/or provide a competitive pressure for improvement. In all of the cases, we see a clear role

for a charismatic leader10 in both mobilizing within the innovative group and by creating link-

ages with donors, NGOs, government officials and long value chains. In these relationships,

knowledge and financial resources are exchanged between external and internal network ac-

tors. We find that in all of these cases the leaders have been both the ‘innovators’ and the

‘institutional entrepreneurs’ who push forward the PGS through their own organizations and

formal institutions of the country and as a question of public debate through linkages with

social movements (like the Via Campesina in Colombia). We see there are a number of linkages

with donors and NGOs, who provide resources for promoting the PGS. The vertical linkages

with universities are ways to gain access to scientific expertise on the agricultural technologies

and experimentation that farmers are conducting. The private sector linkages to supermarkets,

restaurants and long value chains consist of market opportunities to commercialize the PGS

products and to bring consumers closer to the farmers. In the case of Colombia, it is clear that

the market linkages are providing a mechanism that allows consumers to directly communi-

cate their preferences for responsible innovations in sustainable agriculture to farmers and

collectively govern how these are implemented. However, in the case of India where you see

long value chains, the engagement with distant consumers has not been effective in drawing

these consumers into the governance arrangement. Indeed, local geographic proximity is not-

ed in all cases as being important in distributing responsibilities among actors and providing

legitimacy for the PGS as a governance instrument.

De facto practices of RRI governance

The de facto governance dynamics that we see in each of these cases are influenced not only

by the framing of the problem of unsustainable agriculture. As noted in the discussion of the

governance arrangements, there are some debates around the technology as a strategy to

resolve the problem of unsustainable agriculture (i.e., organic or agro-ecology), but most often

the controversies are around the instruments used to verify the practices and the use of the

technology. The notion of the ‘guarantee’ that the governance instrument provides is highly

contested and here the question of who is involved in providing the guarantee and the spatial

distance between the producers and consumers provide fodder for the controversy and de-

bate. I explain this through an explanation of the Bolivian case. While the dynamics explained

below are specific to the Bolivian case, we see similar dynamics in the other cases of de facto

governance of rri.

10 See: Mayer N. Zald and Roberta Ash, "Social Movement Organizations: Growth, Decay and Change," Social Forces 44, no. 3 (1966).

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In Bolivia, the PGS uses the IFOAM promise as the guiding international framework for the

principles of their PGS and how it should function. Following three years of consultations guid-

ed by FAO and the Ministry of Rural Development, Agriculture and the Environment, the Eco-

logical Law 3525 was passed in 2006 and the public agency CNAPE was established to adminis-

ter and promote the law and with the National Food Safety Authority (SENASEG) as the na-

tional competent authority over the systems of control. The law also creates a way to integrate

agro-ecology into its institutions by requiring municipal level governments to incorporate pro-

grams and/or projects for training, technology diffusion, promotion, research and/or devel-

opment of ecological production into their municipal development plans based on the need or

production potential. There is also the requirement that the Ministry of Education incorporate

pertinent information about the environmental, nutritional, economic and cultural benefits of

ecological production into their academic curricula. CNAPE is also given the mandate to create

and strengthen specialized research and technological innovation centers for ecological pro-

duction and provide incentives for increasing research and innovation in this area.

Within this law, agro-ecology is established as “the science and the art used with sovereignty

during the process of agricultural, livestock, apicultural and silvicultural production and the

obtainment of food (healthy, nutritious, safe for human health, of high quality and easy access

to the population, coming from domesticated species and their wild relatives), including its

processing, industrialization and commercialization.” There are two types of certifications al-

lowed by the law: 1) ISO 65 accredited third-party certification bodies for international trade

or export and 2) alternative quality guarantee systems evaluated and control by CNAPE (i.e.,

PGS) for domestic and local trade. This clear separation between the two systems of guarantee

in the law is replicated in practice and is represented by the debates around the differences

between ‘organic’ and ‘agro-ecological’ production. Organic is seen as the ‘export’ production

and is considered to be a weaker version of the technology. The actors are seen as not being as

committed to the core principles of the Ecological law and the guarantees that are provided

are discussed as being foreign and competitive. This is due to the fact that the history of organ-

ic in the country dates back to 1991 where the EU Organic Directive has been the main stand-

ard followed by tropical commodity producers (e.g., coffee, cocoa and quinoa). Also, the main

third-party certifiers working in the country are branches of European and Latin American cer-

tifiers – not wholly domestic companies. In this model of certification, responsibility for ensur-

ing sustainable practices is delegated to the third-party certifier and there is a detached ‘im-

personal’ relationship between the producers, the certifiers and the final end consumers in

foreign countries.

The national PGS, which has harmonized at least 6 existing private PGS in the country, is fo-

cused exclusively on the domestic and local markets. It sets out the minimum requirements for

the structure and the procedures of the PGS. PGS supporters claim that the PGS is more eco-

nomically viable and culturally appropriate than the ‘organic’ model as it ensures that ‘agro-

ecology’ is a balanced use of the technology and not only a substitution of synthetic inputs.

Here the productive technology is balanced by environmental, social/cultural, economic and

political dimensions of practice. The principles of the PGS are: a shared vision, continuous

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learning, horizontal relationships, trust, transparency, and participation. Each of these dimen-

sions have been defined in terms of progress criteria where what the producers must demon-

strate in order to be in compliance varies across 3 stages of development that are linked to the

length of time a producer has been part of the PGS. The governance arrangement that opera-

tionalizes the PGS as a governance instrument is a division of responsibilities between four

groups: 1) producers who take an oath to practice agro-ecology and participate fully in the

PGs; 2) evaluators, who are a group of 3 farmers within each farmer group (about 20 farmers)

that visit the others’ farms to control the practices. This is a rotating responsibility among all

farmers; 3) the Guarantee Committee, which is composed of producers, consumers and repre-

sentatives of local and/or national institutions. There must be a minimum of 3 people and the

total number of people must be an odd number so that decisions can always be made through

a vote. Neither the evaluators nor the representative can be part of the committee, and vice

versa. The guarantee committee evaluates the farmers’ self-evaluation and the audit report

and take a decision about whether or not the farm should be certified; 4) the Representative,

who is democratically elected by the members of the PGS, is the administrator for the PGS and

the contact person for registering the PGS with SENASAG. The law allows any level/ kind of PGS

(composed of just farmers, community level or municipal level), but CNAPE is promoting the

establishment of Municipal PGS because doing so they have access to a technical officer who

can provide training/advice, offices, and public legitimacy for the PGS.

In this system, the responsibilities are shared between the different actors and are embedded

in the instrument and governance arrangement itself. The responsibilities are constructed as

collective responsibilities that are enforced through mechanisms of social control. The produc-

ers discussed how the PGS audit is not the same experience as a third-party audit, which is

seen as a form of a test. The PGS audit is seen more as a learning exercise where the evalua-

tors highlight where the farmer is not fully complying with the principles, but also takes the

time to point out how the farmer can change her practices to improve her production. A rep-

resentative of CNAPE noted that “PGS is also a way to create a consumer.” This can be under-

stood in two ways, the first is that the focus on food sovereignty is taken up by farmers who

are the first consumers of their own production (farmer-consumers) and are thus very con-

cerned about the health and safety of what they produce. During a meeting of municipal eco-

logical councils, CNAPE described the feeling of the group as follows: “ecological producers

demonstrated their pride in producing healthily without degrading the soil for future genera-

tion because food sovereignty means respect for mother earth and a love for life.”11 Second,

consumers who are not producers are increasingly becoming involved through the guarantee

committees (consumer-citizens) and in the traditional fairs/markets where there is direct in-

teraction between PGS farmers who are selling their products with the PGS label and consum-

ers. In an interview, a lead farmer argued that the label and the certificates that they receive

from CNAPE are very important for creating trust with first time consumers in the marketplace.

11 CNAPE. Encuentro de Comités Ecológicos Municipales (CEMs), 6-7 October 2011. Ac-cessed, 29 May 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HRChs_FepM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HRChs_FepM

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She shows consumers the certificate and explains how the system works. This geographic prox-

imity thus is very important for ensuring effective implementation of the governance instru-

ment. Most of the mobilization of actors in these PGS are through capacity building projects

and agenda setting at the municipal level due to the need to include agro-ecology into the

municipal development plans.

In the case of Bolivia, we see that the governance dynamics are the result of attempts to cre-

ate competing systems of governance for controlling research, innovation and market dynam-

ics for organic agriculture. Given the history and dominance of third-party certification within

international trade for organic products, there is still a need for PGS to be recognized as legiti-

mate and effective instruments of control. In the case of Bolivia, the actors claim that legitima-

cy exists when the municipal government accepts and support what they are doing: “They

need to make these agro-ecology committees legitimate, how do they do this? By including

the public institutions”12 This is shows that the actors are focusing their efforts towards the

state. This can be explained because of the contemporary socio-political environment where

there is a strong socialist state that has invested in agro-ecology through legislation and by

investing in creating linkages between a new government agency, municipal level government

and the educational institutions. However, some PGS leaders expressed frustration by long

waiting times associated with passing through the municipality for the renewal of their certifi-

cates. In this case, we find that the national label/certificate is also important in gaining legiti-

macy as it is used to create trust in the commercial relationship – even in a direct marketing

relationship. In this sense, it seems that the label is legitimizing not only the practices, but also

the actors as being dedicated to the systems of social control. Expired certificates were a point

of contestation as they provided legitimacy for the farmers in the form of commercial reputa-

tion and recognition. Thus, the public legitimacy that PGS receive through their approval by

the public institutions is also at risk if the governance arrangements are not efficiently man-

aged (in terms of certificate renewal and the technical support for farmers). As a result, we

might characterize the effectiveness of the PGS in terms of the ability of the different actors to

turn this PGS into a political and market instrument – i.e., the extent to which producers are

able to keep their markets and whether they are able to use the PGS to lobby for support of

agro-ecology at the municipal level.

Responsibilisation, ‘doing well’?

Through the comparison of six different PGS, we can highlight where ‘well-doing’ is seen as

effective and legitimate. We do this by categorizing the conditions where ‘shared understand-

ing’ of responsibility are consistently found across the cases. The extent to which these PGS

are ‘doing well’ depends upon the individual cases and actors involved in each specific PGS. In

all of the PGS cases we find ‘well doing’ along the axis of responsibilisation and not managing

12 UC-CNAPE extension officer, 17 March 2014.

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contestation. We argue that these are cases of responsibilisation because the PGS as a govern-

ance tool is proposed as an alternative to corporate models of third-party certification. There-

fore, they have been specifically developed to encourage responsiveness among actors in

short value chains around a relatively stable package of agricultural technologies, rather than

work to manage competing visions or interpretations of the problem of unsustainable agricul-

ture.

We have characterized the Indian, Namibian and Ugandan cases as achieving the input re-

quirements for responsibilisation, but not yet demonstrating productive transformation. Each

country has a different reason for this, but overall this characterization is the use of the PGS

mostly as a control mechanism that is mainly driven by NGOs and not by the farm-

ers/consumers themselves. The characterization of Bolivia, Colombia and the Philippines cases

as being transformative is related to their success in the creation of a strong vision that is driv-

ing the continued evolution of the PGS, their capability to embed both more different types of

actors and responsibilities into the PGS itself and to integrate the PGS mechanism into the

formal institutions in the case of Bolivia and the Philippines. In Colombia, the private sector is

robust enough that private and civic actors, and the networks that they have built, are produc-

tively embedding responsibility into the PGS system.

Overall, we see potential for PGS “doing well” in the local contexts for which they are devel-

oped. The focus on learning and embedding responsibilities into social mechanisms of control

and peer-review ensures that a plurality of actors do actually participate in these systems.

Trust is based on experiential knowledge and direct relationships between actors at a local

level. This is important as the PGS system has emerged as a response and refutation of the

proxies that have been created for personal trust and experiential knowledge in the dominant

paradigm of third-party certification. The main challenges to this governance model are the

questions of geographical and epistemological space and scale. While these efforts are work-

ing well within small, geographically confined spaces, tensions arise as PGS attempt to cross

these spaces in order to participate in global value chains (e.g. India).

Table 1 Well Doing of de facto rri governance

Constructive

(input requirements)

Productive (transformation)

Responsibili-

sation

India

Namibia

Uganda

Bolivia

Colombia

Philippines

Managing

contestation

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Drawing Lessons for Res-AGorA

Agro-ecology is a ‘knowledge-intensive’ agricultural technology – it requires significant invest-

ments in time, knowledge, experimentation. PGS is also a ‘knowledge intensive’ governance

instrument as it also requires investments in time, expertise of the agro-ecological techniques

and is based on voluntary mechanisms of social control. We found the drivers of PGS located

at two different levels: local experimentation in resolving the problems that are identified in

existing systems; and a transnational element, where these systems receive support (financial

and capacity) from national or transnational actors. The importance of knowledge in these

bottom-up initiatives points to an important need to take the role of capacity building, and

who is providing this capacity building, into account in a governance framework.

The PGS are easily modified and extended because the standards that are used to create them

have encoded provisions for local interpretation and adaptation. Therefore each group that

creates a PGS has the ability to adapt it to their local conditions. This makes the instrument

flexible and extendible. However, this condition is what poses questions to its legitimacy to

those actors who are working within the 3PC model of governance (mostly the international

trade actors). They see flexibility and ‘learning’ as ‘conflicts of interest’, which turn the notion

of responsibility into questions of individual liability. It seems that in those PGS where there is

a national level standard that condones its use, it is seen as being more effective and legiti-

mate by a wider group of actors. But its voluntary nature is important in this respect, since it is

a large time investment, which may not be as easily adopted if it were made the mandatory

mode of verification. Therefore, a balance needs to be found in a RRI governance instrument

between the flexibility of local process and the rigidity of global principles.

RRI would need to be understood differently in terms of thinking outside of formal organiza-

tions and ‘strategic’ innovation systems. Here, research and innovation are organized within

overtly political and market initiatives and are not labeled as RRI, however, the governance

instrument in this case embeds a sharing of responsibility for the technology adoption and

governance of the process within its system of control/verification and not as an assignment of

individual legal liability.

Building components for a socio-normative framework are found when we look at the con-

struction of institutions – new rules and the actors who are involved in implementing them. As

a result, we should be paying attention not only to how the rules are developed, but also to

how the implementation/interpretation/verification systems are designed that enable a wider

range of actors to take responsibility in the innovation process. By exploring these aspects, we

see a few dominant values and normativities such as participation by public and private ‘inter-

ested’ actors, transparency, strong leadership, experiential knowledge, applied problem-

solving and learning, these are underpinned by the value of food sovereignty.

This case shows very clearly how rri issues are closely tied to economic interests in terms of

the need to commercialize products that emerge from innovation processes; and to political

interests in terms of forwarding a political agenda aimed to transform the dominant socio-

13

technical regime for agricultural production. It is very difficult to explore how these PGS work

as governance instruments without taking into account the interactions between private initia-

tives, local governance and hierarchical integration into broad principle-based national and

international instruments. On the side of the innovations, it is clear that there is cross-

fertilization in the creation of local and international markets for the products coming from the

new technology (in this case organic). Without both local and global pressures that stimulate

the innovation, these systems would be weaker than they currently are.

14

Table 2

Country Governance Arrangements Actor Landscape De facto Governance Prac-

tices

‘Well-doing’

Bolivia R&I: Regulating value chains

P: Food sovereignty,

Health (nutrition/safety)

PI: Law and soft regulation

SE: Formal Institutional Structures

WGL: Vertical: National Voluntary Organic

Law & PGS standard

Horizontal: Competing with 3PC

Vertical:

Donors (FAO, Spain)

Leadership

Horizontal:

Producer-Auditor

Producer-Consumer

Consumer-citizen

School canteens

Municipal officials

DF: Agroecology

S: Local economy

SI: Local fairs, Training

AM: Capacity building

RC: Peer-review, sharing and

rotating responsibility roles

IU: Compliance, conversa-

tional/reflexive tool

Productive Responsibilisation

15

Colombia R&I: Regulating value chains

P: Food sovereignty


SE: Informal Institutional Structures

WGL: Vertical: Organic Policy Proposal,

National Association

Horizontal: Collaborating with 3PC

Vertical:

Restaurants

Cooking school

Peasant movement

Leadership

Horizontal:

Consumer-citizen

Producer-consumer

University

District-level public institutions

DF: Agroecology

S: Native seeds

SI: Gourmet food scene, Re-

search collaboration

AM: Resource provision capac-

ity building

RC: Peer-review, division of

responsibilities




India R&I: Regulating value chains

P: Health (safe food)


SE: Formal Institutional Structures

WGL: Vertical: National Organic Law, Pub-

lic PGS standard, Private PGS standard

Vertical:

Donors (FAO, IFOAM)

Long value chains

Leadership

Horizontal:

NGOs

DF: Organic, Costs of 3PC

S: Native seeds, Yields

SI: Field visits, Research col-

laboration

AM: Resource provision capac-

Constructive Responsibilisation

16

Horizontal: Competing with 3PC and with

public PGS

Farmer groups

Producer-Auditor

ity building


responsibilities



Philippines R&I: Regulating value chains

P: Community livelihood



WGL: Vertical: National Organic Act, Pri-

vate PGS standard


Vertical:

Provincial government

NGOs

University

Leadership

Horizontal:

Producer-marketer

Producer-auditor


S: Farmer control over ge-

netic/bio-resources

SI: Local markets, Research

collaboration

AM: Resource provision, ca-

pacity building

RC: Peer-review, sharing and

rotating responsibility roles




17

Namibia R&I: Regulating value chains

P: Health (safe food), Wildlife



WGL: Vertical: Private Org Standard, Pri-

vate PGS Standard, MAWF Rangeland

Policy and Conservation Agriculture


Vertical:

Allan Savory Institute Super-

markets

National Organic Movement

NGOs

Leadership

Horizontal:

Producer-marketer

Consumer-citizens


S: National ‘fresh’ food

conservation/Tourism

SI: Local markets

AM: Agenda setting, capacity

building


responsibilities




Uganda R&I: Regulating value chains

P: Health (nutrition/safety)



Vertical:

Supermarkets

National Organic Movement

Donors (UN, Sida)


S: Local economy

SI: Facebook, group meetings


18

WGL: Vertical: Regional Org Standard &

PGS standard


Leadership

Horizontal :

Producer-consumer

Farmer groups

SACCO

AM: Capacity building


responsibilities



Note: R&I = research and innovation characteristics, P: purpose, PI: policy instrument, SE: system of enforcement, WGL: wider governance landscape,

DF: definitional frame S: solution, SI: spaces of interaction, AM: actor mobilization, RC: responsibility construction, IU: instrument used.

.

Co-funded by the European Union

Towards Anticipatory Governance

of Responsible Research and

Innovation

The objective of the Res-AGorA project is to develop a comprehensive governance framework for re-sponsible research and innovation (RRI). This will be a contribution to the EU ambition of becoming a genuine Innovation Union by 2020 striving for excellent science, a competitive industry and a better society without compromising on sustainability goals as well as ethically acceptable and socially desira-ble conditions.

The goal of the Rea-AGorA project will be achieved through extensive case study research about existing RRI governance across different scientific technological areas, continuous monitoring of RRI trends in 16 European countries, and constructive negotiations and deliberation between key stakeholders. This comprehensive empirical work will be the building blocks of the creation of a governance framework for RRI.

The case study summarised in this document is output of Res-AGorA’s extensive empirical programme (Work Package 3).

More information at www.res-agora.eu

Contact for Res-AGorA’s case study programme (WP3) Dr. Sally Randles Manchester Institute of Innovation Research MIoIR [email protected]

Prof. Dr. Jakob Edler Manchester Institute of Innovation Research MIoIR [email protected]

Res-AGorA Co-ordinator Prof. Dr. Ralf Lindner Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI [email protected]

Acknowledgement

This project is receiving funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for

research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 321427.

http://www.res-agora.eu/




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