LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

KEYNOTE SESSION 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
Tuesday, 2 October
Keynote session
Sustainable food, a component of the green economy
Dominique Dron
Interministerial Delegate and General Commissioner for Sustainable Development, Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development
and Energy, Paris, France.
ABSTRACT
From the French perspective, the green economy has both economic and environmental but also social objectives. Agriculture is at
the crossroad of various environmental challenges and involves living organisms. Sustainable agriculture calls for new public policies
which mobilise both consumers and producers. The proposal for environmental labelling of products aims at launching signals to
these different stakeholders to redirect their practices towards a low-carbon economy with low use of natural resources and pollution.
Keywords: green economy, sustainable food, environmental labelling
1. The challenges of the green economy
1.1 Roads towards a green economy after the "Rio+20" conference
Firstly, during the "Rio+20" summit, France defended a certain view of what a green economy should be.
It cannot be limited to a pure environmental approach, and even less to the question of climate change. This
economy has to be friendly to natural balances (climate, ecosystems, etc.), sparing resources and be also lowcarbon.
Its objectives are environmental and economic, but also societal: it has to change consumption patterns
in parallel with production methods. In fact, the green economy requires a new pattern of development
with its cultural changes.
It should be based on new technologies which spare energy, preserve natural resources and reduce greenhouse
gases. Although new sectors have to emerge to modify the way our societies work, all existing sectors,
and agriculture in particular, must also change their production models.
Refocusing economic models requires different types of tools:
• Wider knowledge and better information available to stakeholders. Research is required for this, as is
specific work to inform producers and consumers. In particular this requires working on indicators
downstream of science as these are means of conveying or translating scientific knowledge to users,
practitioners and citizens.
• Regulatory instruments and economic instruments. Complying with the constitutional principle of
polluter-pays in particular requires taxes and subsidies to be settled. Yet immediate economic interests of
some representatives of farming often oppose the former and do not enable the latter to be ideally targeted.
Here again, scientific work upstream is essential to build a given instrument, prove its legitimacy and assess
its influence and effects.
The second element highlighted by Rio+20 is the necessity of making progress on an international level.
The conference underlined the gap between industrialised countries, emerging countries and developing
countries with regard to the concept of green economy, whose global nature, particularly on the social level,
is often desired but has not been recognised yet. We therefore welcome the interest of international work
leading to general awareness raising, prior to action, such as the LCA-FOOD 2012 conference. Better identifying
the impact of production and consumption methods in different regions of the planet is essential in the
hope of establishing fruitful and effective compromises in future. For this we need new, culturally shared
tools on a scientific basis.
Finally, the third idea to be taken from Rio+20 is the ever increasing role of society, often called “civil
society”, in negotiations. This mobilisation, and we could say this questioning, not only target States and
public decision makers. They also address the research community. They should lead us to increase integration
of disciplines and activities and to involve society in specialists' work far upstream.
1.2 The agricultural nexus
As to sustainable agriculture, the starting point is the following point shared by the research community
and international futurists: sufficient and varied food for 9 to 10 billion people in 2050 can be reached, but
only if food production almost doubles.
This scenario would imply a strong mobilisation of natural resources. Over the same period, energy demand
will thus strongly increase, as will pressure on water resources. The scale and success of the 6 th World
Water Forum (March 2012 in Marseille) enabled these analyses to be shared. A nexus is now common-
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