Agri-chains and sustainable development: linking local and global dynamics

Organized by the Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement - CIRAD, the international scientific conference Agri-Chains and Sustainable Development: linking local and global dynamics will bring together up to 300 delegates, including key actors from developing countries and innovators from the field from all world regions, to debate about the role of agricultural value chains in the pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals.

World agricultural systems are at the heart of global challenges, being at the same time threats but also solutions to sustainability challenges: biomass supply and food security, poverty reduction, unemployment, health, climate and energy transition, biodiversity and ecosystem services, desertification, pollutions and resource scarcity and waste. In a globalized context marked notably by intensified commercial and financial flows, increasing sanitary risks and by rapid consumer behavior evolutions, profound technical, economic and social transformations take place in value chains. Linking agricultural production with the other economic sectors and ultimately with consumers, it is through value chains that local and global challenges to sustainability meet and that local and global actors experiment interlinked or common solutions. Increased environmental and social concerns urge value chain actors and development practitioners to propose methods and tools to improve sustainability, and public and private actors to invent new forms of regulations in connection with value chains. Agricultural value chains are therefore key spaces where the implementation of the SDGs is constructed and negotiated and where multistakeholders’ partnerships are defined.

The conference aims at strengthening the science and policy interface for the implementation of the 2030 focusing the debate on the following tree aspects:

Theme 1 “Performance and evaluation of agri-chains with respect to the SDGs”

Theme 2 “Public policies and agri-chain governance mechanisms at different scales in support of the SDGs”

Theme 3 “Concrete innovations and partnerships for building and transforming agri-chains towards sustainable development".The deadline for early bird registration is on the 6th november 2016 and all information about the speakers (EU, Ministries, Universities, etc.) and the main ans parallel sessions is available here.