Jean-David GERBER, University of Bern, Switzerland
Christoph OBERLACK, University of Bern, Switzerland
Sarah STEINEGGER, University of Bern, Switzerland
The high social and ecological costs of globalization and trade liberalization in agriculture have prompted countermovements advocating agri-food production schemes that sustain culture- and region-specific practices. Geographical Indications (GIs) developed in Europe and have been implemented elsewhere to respond to regional governance and development issues. They protect intellectual property rights in a context of fierce market competition and diversification to enhance decentralized value creation. Nevertheless, their association with terroirs suggests that GIs also have public good characteristics that are based on region-specific bio-cultural heritage (Sylvander et al., 2011; Barham & Sylvander, 2011).
In our contribution, we build on this fundamental tension between GI certification as a catalyst for the creation and maintenance of terroirs – which we refer to as a commonification process –, and the establishment of market-based exchange and valuation of terroirs-related resources – which we refer to as a commodification process. Our conceptual approach connects new institutionalism with political ecology to analyze the dialectical relationship between GIs acting as commonification and/or commodification instruments. Understanding the mechanisms at work is essential to capture GIs’ impact on sustainable regional development. To do so, this contribution will assess the overarching hypothesis that the higher the extent to which GIs work as a Common Pool Resource Institution (CPRI – to use the concept of Ostrom’s school), the more they contribute to sustainable regional development, accounting also for regional and cultural dimensions. We explore the conditions of the emergence and perpetuation of such localized regulatory arrangements and their impact on the long-term management of natural resources. We illustrate our conceptualization efforts with examples from Switzerland.
Mots clés : commonification|commodification|sustainable development|cultural heritage|terroir
A104237SS