Actes et contributions > Par intervenant > Baritaux Virginie

This communication analyze the institutional innovations, both at the national level by the INAO, the French regulatory agency in charge of supervising geographical indications (GIs) in France, as well as by representatives and local GIs producers in France as a response to the 2018 EGALIM Law imposing to French geographical indications, especially in the wine sector to better integrate before 2030 environmental dimensions either in their code of specifications (including DAE – Agri-environmental Dispositions), or through environmental certifications at farm level (HVE or organic label), as well as by adopting others collective strategies are observed, from GIs groups themselves. Over the last decades, the introducing such environmental requirements has subject to major debates and controversies in the French context (Ansaloni and Fouilleux, 2008).

In a first step, our analysis provides a general but detailed overview of the different recent initiatives developed by French GIs at national and local level to better integrate agroecological practices in GIs agroecosystems (DAE, environmental certification, etc). These recent regulatory evolutions are taking place at a moment where the adaptation to climate change effects has become a major issue in most French vineyards (Ollard and Touzard 2024),but also with the French strategy towards zero-pesticide and agroecological transitions (Jacquard et al. 2022; Ruggieri et al. 2023). We then discuss the positioning of different GIs systems as levers of action into the typology proposed by Duru et al (2017) to characterize different biodiversity-based models of agriculture in the context of agroecological transitions. The paradox is here that by promoting the specific link between traditional food products and their “terroir”, GIs also contributed in France to maintain agrobiodiversity in the context of the agricultural modernization and intensification after WWII (Bérard and Marchenay 2006; Mazé 2023). More recently, a number of collective initiatives have been stimulated for agroecosystems supporting cheese and meat productions under GIs especially in mountains areas (Baritaux et al 2016; Nozières-Petit et al. 2023). Our results show that, there is no unique way of characterizing biodiversity-based and agroecological models for GIs, but understanding this diversity is a crucial step in relation to their territorial and ecological embeddedness at landscape level, as well as reassessing the specific links between GIs products and their terroir.