Seminar Politics of Environemental Monitoring – The complexities of environmental monitoring: Lessons for the zero-deforestation commitments of the Amsterdam Declaration
06 February 2020 | 9h00 – 16h00
Registration to the seminar is free but compulsory
Background:
The implementation of private Zero Deforestation Commitments (ZDCs), as well as government led initiatives such as the Amsterdam Declaration and the EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement will require the establishment of monitoring mechanisms to verify the compliance of agricultural exports. This approach suggests that monitoring compliance can effectively create an economic, tradeable value for a range of environmental services and nature-based agricultural products. Indeed, the history of private certification schemes demonstrates that there is a wealth of initiatives valuing the environment by monitoring the practices of specific groups of actors (often marginalized actors) in global trade. Moreover, numerous studies demonstrate that technological, organizational, legal and political challenges emerge alongside the establishment of trade monitoring mechanisms, particularly those that will involve the development or the adoption of already existing satellite-based monitoring systems, property-level registries, and animal tracking systems. What then, might we expect as yet another wave of environmental monitoring mechanisms, based on digital technologies and quantitative data, seek to achieve an aspirational target?
This research seminar – co-organized by ProdiG (Pôle de recherche pour l’organisation et la diffusion de l’information géographique), LAGESA (Environmental Services Research Lab from UFMG, Brazil), and LISIS (Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences, Innovations et Sociétés) intends to bring together researchers that have studied the establishment of monitoring and certification systems in different countries in order to draw lessons that could be useful to the implementation of both private and public ZDCs and the safeguards of the EU-Mercosur agreement. By opening a direct dialogue with academics, public administrators and other stakeholders, this seminar intends to build a bridge between these different contexts and countries, and in this way forge constructive paths towards the sustainable international trade of agricultural goods
Programme :
8h45 – 9h00: Welcome
9h00 – 13h00: Introduction and case studies
The Amsterdam Declaration
Ministère de l’Agriculture et de l’Alimentation (tbc)
Monitoring deforestation in supply chains in Brazil
Raoni Rajão (Universidade Federal Minas Gerais)
(Geo)political dimensions of agro-environmental monitoring in four South American countries: an “informational sovereignty” perspective.
Pierre Gautreau (PRODIG / Universite Paris-1)
— pause café —
Making biodiversity tradable – The case of ecological offset
Stéphanie Barral (LISIS / INRAe) and Fanny Guillet (LISIS / MNHN)
Governing through water accounting in France
Gabrielle Bouleau (LISIS / INRAe)
Economic development and the environment: the case of deforestation in Brazil
Julien Wolfersberger (Économie publique / AgroParisTech)
Lunch: 13h00 – 14h00
14h00 – 16h00: Conclusions and Discussion
Making sustainable trade in practice
Allison Loconto (LISIS / INRAe)
Final discussion and next steps