Participatory Guarantee ABSYSs Conference 2020: “30 Years of PGS Development: A Root and Branch Appraisal”

In the days leading up to the Organic World Congress 2020, which will happen in France (Rennes), participants have the opportunity to engage in topic specific pre-conference. The PGS preconference has been selected among other preconference proposals.

CIRAD, Nature & Progrès and IFOAM - Organics International are thus co-organising the long-awaited international meeting on Participatory Guarantee Systems, which will be held on the 21st of September 2020, in Rennes, just before the OWC.

After 15 years from the Torres event, this Participatory Guarantee Systems Pre-conference will create the opportunity to gather again PGS practitioners, NGOs, Civil Society Organizations, policy makers and researchers from all over the world to stocktake on current PGS development, setting new strategies, targets and defining goals to improve PGS worldwide.

Our funding request for this event is thus part of a mixed project strongly involving both researchers and civil society actors. This conference intends to be an international conference of high scientific quality (the selection of contributors is made, among others, by a scientific committee including CIRAD, INRA, the University of Toulouse and the University of Cordoba). The funding allocated through this grant will be use to ensure non only the high quality of the event but also to two fully cover the participation of two researchers from Less developed Countries (or more, depending if we need to offer a full or partial support), keeping in mind youth and gender balance. Thanks to the grant the organizers will be also able to strengthen the link with civil society and to ensure broad participation, and consequently greater dissemination, through the organization of working group, designed and supported by the organization LISODE, an expert in facilitation of participatory processes and by ensuring simultaneous translation in 3 different languages. Without any doubts, this conference will allow to capitalize and create new pedagogical tools for vocational training on PGS that does not really exist anywhere else at the moment.Part of the co-financing done by partner organizations will be used to ensure live streaming of the conference’s sessions and open access and dissemination of the conference proceedings.