Session 5. 2.

GI production systems are localized food approaches based on terroir, i.e. the specific conjunction of human knowledge and cultures, techniques and their local natural environment. The specific link between the product and its terroir is detailed in a book of specifications for each GI, which specify the product's characteristics and the agricultural and processing practices authorized to qualify for the label. These collective rules are subject to permanent reassessment and co-evolution, influenced by the modes of collective action adopted by geographical indications through their Management Bodies (ODG), as well as by the regulatory mechanisms at national and European levels.
Picodon is a goat's cheese from the southern part of France, recognized as a denomination of origin since 1983. In 2017, after several years of debate, the book of specifications has been changed, seeking to “strengthen the link to the terroir”, notably by modifying livestock feeding practices. In parallel, climate change affects the appellation area by abnormal periods of drought and/or humidity, and adds constraints to these collective rules on practices and further restrict access to resources, particularly forage.
In this work, we propose to study how this desire to “strengthen the link to the terroir” has translated into collective rules, by studying in particular the knowledge shared by the various stakeholder groups and their respective roles in the governance of this common. We then investigate how these collective rules promote or exclude certain practices used by farmers as strategies for adapting to climate change, and how they fit or not into a collective learning process towards greater resilience.

The United States utilizes a trademark system to enable the development of Geographical Indications (GIs) for foodstuffs under the WTO Trips Article 22 provisions. While several different farmer groups, often commodity groups, have used this system successfully, GIs have not proliferated in the United States the way they have in Europe and other countries. The question arises as to what the specific barriers to adoption of GIs in the United States are. A recent project to develop a GI for a Michigan fruit industry sheds light on this. While literature on GIs points to certain benefits of the European, sui generis style intellectual property regimes, the limitations we encountered with the United State’s system for GIs may relate more to specific organizational requirements for producer groups than to an inherent problem with the use of trademark systems for GIs. Therefore, while a new, sui generis intellectual property regime could potentially help address this issue, a simpler legislative fix to the existing trademark program could provide the flexibility needed for increased adoption of GIs by farm and food producer groups.

Geographical indications (GIs) allow producer organizations to define and defend collective heritage, food quality, and reputation tied to territorial origin. In Ecuador, the first GI to be declared in accordance with global evidentiary and regulatory standards was Café de Galápagos, which emerged through a French technical assistance program in 2015. Yet since that time, Galápagos coffee producers have been unable to enforce collective standards, maintain control over their lucrative origin name, or enhance the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of the sector. To analyze this case study, we apply the framework of the localized agrofood system (SYAL), which highlights the interaction of territorial factors that shape the collective construction and valorization of cultural, natural, human, and symbolic resources. We find that both public and private actors emphasized the Galápagos Islands’ history and physical features to associate coffee with the renown of Charles Darwin, natural history, and charismatic fauna. Yet in doing so, they neglected to valorize producer identities or collective know-how, build a strong collective organization, and institutionalize rules that were viewed as legitimate. We conclude by arguing that the management of collective resources through GI initiatives in the Global South can be made more effective and equitable through greater attention to knowledge, identity, and legitimacy.

In this communication, we propose to reassess the role of protected geographical indications (GIs) as “territorial commons”, defined as a set of shared collective natural and immaterial resources used by a supporting the specific GIs agroecosystems and coproduced by a community of actors at territorial and landscape levels. A number of recent studies have emphasized the parallel between the specific collective organization of GIs systems and the seminal analysis developed by Elinor Ostrom (1990) on governing the commons, and most recent development with the new commons (Hess and Ostrom, 2007) and the sustainability of social ecological systems (Ostrom 2009). As a matter of fact, the definition of terroir, as adopted by the OIV (2010) and defined by INAO, provide strong and closed connection with the governance of commons, as defined by Ostrom (1990, 2009) combining both biophysical factors and shared cultural and knowledge resources developed by local communities (Mazé 2023).
First applied to the governance of specific natural resources, such as water, prairies, forest, their extension to more complex agroecosystems, combining different territorial material and immaterial resources at landscape level, we first propose a methodological and analytical extension of the IAD/SES framework (Ostrom 2009, McGinnis and Ostrom 2014)to analyze the sustainability of complex GIs agroecosystems both at landscape level and to capture from a dynamic and processual analysis of past and current transformations in the context of agroecological transitions and global climate changes. By considering GIs agroecosystems as dynamic social-ecological systems (SES), our analysis emphasizes the different models of territorial and ecological embeddedness supporting GIs in France and the trade-offs faces in supporting the development of biodiversity-based agriculture. The methodology and analytical extensions proposed are illustrated by a few number case studies of French GIs that, there is no unique way of characterizing biodiversity-based agroecological model for GIs. Understanding this diversity is a crucial step in relation to their territorial embeddedness at landscape level, as well as reassessing the specific links between GIs products and their terroir.

In April 2022, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka announced the suspension of repayment of Sri Lankan external debt service, thus defaulting for the first time in its history and highlighting an economic crisis whose warning signs had been accumulating for several years. Following this episode, the country entered a major economic crisis (depreciation of the rupee, increased inflation, decline in official reserves) leading to shortages of basic goods: fuel, medicines, gas, chemical inputs, foodstuffs. The economic crisis had a strong impact on the agricultural sector and the Ceylon tea industry was not spared. Representing 11% of the national export revenues in 2023($1.3 billion), tea is an essential component of the Sri Lankan economy. Despite the arrangements put in place by the public authorities, the tea industry has been seriously affected, highlighting structural difficulties linked to a dual dependency: on imported mineral fertilization for production, and on the configuration of international markets with regard to exports.
In this context, the project to create a geographical indication (GI) for Ceylon tea, led by the Sri Lanka Tea Board, the apex body of the Sri Lanka Tea industry, was announced as a tool providing collective response to the crisis. The exercise of defining the specific quality of Ceylon tea linked to its origin posed a practical challenge: the re-embeddedness of tea production process in its territory - in its environmental, social and economic dimensions.
Using the IAD/SES framework, this communication will provide a longitudinal analysis of the Ceylon Tea PGI building process. The analysis will explore the different dimension of the collective action and arena of discussions. It will highlight the difficulties in re-articulating the socio-ecosystems dynamics with the productive one to propose a collective response to the extent of the structural difficulties of the Ceylon tea sector.
The analytical work presented is based on 2 years of participant observation and semi-directed interviews covering all the segments of the tea industry from tea gardens to exporters (> 60 ). It also uses the results of thematic working group sessions involving all the unions from the various segments of the industry (> 120 participants), the results of the PGI consultation workshops (> 550 participants). ), the incremental versions of the GI specifications . All of these materials made it possible to trace the timeline of the project up to the submission of the specifications to the European Commission in September 2024.