News

TroPikantes, Forest and Biodiversity Roundtable « What needs to change? »

27.09.2019

Organized by Anouk Arrondeau, a Master II student at the Institut d’Etudes du Développement de la Sorbonne, the round table on September 20 took place during the TroPikantes university festival at the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale de Nogent.

Les Tropikantes: a student, cultural and critical festival initiated in 2017.

This event brings together a diversity of actors who want to break with preconceived ideas and talk about the Spicy (Pikants) subject. This year’s theme « One Our World » was intended to resonate with the international negotiations on the Global Compact for the Environment.

IDDRI, GRET, Kinomé, Fair Trade France and ATIBT were present to discuss international dynamics on biodiversity and forest issues around three key moments: Denounce, Act, Reflect.

Frédéric Amiel, IDDRI, presented the economic and political challenges of agricultural commodity value chains using the example of cocoa.

Judicaël Fetiveau, Gret, presented the Scientific and Technical Committee on Forests, a tool for implementing the strategy to reduce imported deforestation, financed by AFD.

Caroline Duhesme, ATIBT, then went on to talk about the timber sector, the last source of deforestation after mining and agriculture. Caroline explained the principles of certification, the limitations of the economic models of certified forest concessions and the importance of synergies with agro-forestry sectors such as cocoa to diversify this model and give more value to forests.

Damien Kuhn, Kinomé, presented the impacts on climate change of the cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire by highlighting the importance of coupling forest and cocoa and bringing together all the stakeholders in the landscape.

Arthur Gautier, Ethicable-Commerce équitable France, continued on the cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire by highlighting the weaknesses of the system that do not allow small producers to have a sustainable and low-impact exploitation. Ethical, tested with a local cooperative on a quality sustainable organic farm, it is beginning to bear fruit.

Pierre Janin, moderator of the round table, summarized the discussions into 5 themes:

– Reflection on the axes of development: the technical and economic model, the need for synergy between growth needs and the environment.

– Time and geographical scaling: urgency to act but with systems over about thirty years.

– Create synergies between actors with disparate interests

– How to create trust and legitimacy

Discussions followed between the speakers and the participants of the round table, allowing for in-depth discussions on the topics presented by the experts.