This paper rethinks the governance of genebanks in a social and political context that has significantly evolved since their establishment. The theoretical basis for the paper is the commons conceptual framework in relation to both seed and plant genetic resources. This framework is applied to question the current policy ecosystem of genetic research and breeding and explore different collective governance models. The concept of crop diversity management system (CDMS) commons is proposed as the new foundation for a more holistic and inclusive framework for crop diversity management, that covers a broad range of concerns and requires different actors. The paper presents a multi-stakeholder process established within the context of the two recent projects CoEx and Dynaversity, imagining possible collective arrangements to overcome existing deadlocks, foster collective learning, and design collaborative relationships among genebanks, researchers, and farmers’ civil society organizations involved in crop diversity management.

Un colloque intitulé « Pour une recherche et une innovation responsables » s’est tenu le 15 janvier 2021. Organisé par un groupe de travail interinstitutionnel (universités, instituts de recherche, grandes écoles), il visait à réinterroger le rôle et les pratiques de la recherche. Les tables rondes couvraient des thèmes liés à la fois aux finalités sociétales de la recherche pour un meilleur alignement avec les défis du développement durable, aux défis concrets de la gestion de sites et des comportements individuels et collectifs pour diminuer le coût environnemental et sociétal de la conduite des travaux de recherche et enfin aux défis d’apprentissage et de gouvernance de la recherche et de l’innovation pour que les savoirs viennent accompagner des changements de pratiques à l’échelle de l’ensemble des acteurs concernés. Ce texte propose de relire cette conférence à la lumière d’une grille d’analyse macro/micro/méso qui offre un moyen d’appréhender les différents niveaux d’action qui ont été évoqués pendant cette conférence, parfois au sein d’une même table ronde. Le niveau macro a surtout été couvert dans les deux premières tables rondes qui ont fait émerger le constat que les normes globales qui désormais guident la recherche ont fortement évolué. Il a souvent été fait référence au niveau micro pour parler de la multiplication d’initiatives prises par les chercheurs, individuellement ou collectivement, pour diminuer l’impact de leurs recherches sur l’environnement. Le niveau méso est finalement celui qui a le plus occupé les débats avec une série d’instruments, d’outils et d’initiatives pris par différentes organisations pour essayer à l’échelle de collectifs plus larges, de prendre en charge certains défis, gérer d’éventuelles tensions entre injonctions contradictoires venant du niveau macro et ainsi aider à faire bouger les lignes et à engager davantage la recherche vers des pratiques responsables.

Establishing linkage among data of diverse domains (e.g. biological, environmental, socio-economical, and geographical) is critical to address complex multidimensional issues such as food security or sustainable agriculture. The complexity of this challenge increases with the level of heterogeneity of the data but also with the social context of production of datasets, a dimension usually less considered. Building on the experience of a transdisciplinary project on the diversity of crop diversity management systems in West Africa (CoEx), this chapter reflects on the importance to better account for agency for more meaningful, responsible and efficient plant data linkage. The chapter addresses sequentially the cognitive and political challenges related to data work and the way they could be addressed simultaneously within the same social unit. To do this, we rely on the concept of community of practice (CoP) which gained enormous popularity in relation to data and knowledge management. More than simply a social mechanism for community knowledge management, we show in this contribution that CoP needs to be approached as a social experiment and a terrain of collective situated learning in order to address each challenge and their linkages with respect to data work.

Public demands for accountable, problem-solving, and impactful research, together with global climate and inequality crises, push research organisations to rethink their impact strategies beyond academic performance indicators based on peer-reviewed publications. Part of these organisations conduct applied research and attempt to assess the effect of their activities on the ground. This is the case for agricultural research organisations, which mission is to improve performances of eco-agri-food systems across all sustainability dimensions. Yet, these assessments have mainly remained concentrated along specific research lines and performance indicators, lacking explicit reflection on the theories of change against which the impact of research should be evaluated. They also tend to prioritize quantitative measures, with the traditional question “which benefits from one invested dollar?” and focus on research outputs (such as publications, patents, technologies, events), less often on understanding the uptake of these outputs by stakeholders, the associated behavioral changes they generate, and the mechanisms underlying those changes. This is encouraged by research-funding mechanisms that tend to favor short-term projects, logic-framework exercices, and projects’ output rather than behavioral change and impact per se. More in-depth considerations are necessary to examine research through the prism of impact, at both research organisation and wider research ecosystem levels.