Renouveler la gestion de ressources communes par la conception innovante ? Le cas d’une race locale au Pays basque

Abstract

Au coeur des relations entre les sociétés et leur milieu, les races animales sont exemplaires du pilotage du monde vivant par les hommes qui les façonnent, comme des opérateurs de la production de ressources (matérielles, cognitives, symboliques ...) à partir des éléments de leur environnement. Julie Labatut et al. l'avaient déjà illustré avec l'exemple des races ovines laitières locales des Pyrénées-Atlantiques (voir NSS, 2, 2012). Retraçant une recherche-intervention autour de l'une de ces races, ce nouvel article éclaire la manière dont s'organise l'action collective entre les parties prenantes concernées pour (re)générer l'innovation nécessaire à la gestion adaptative des dynamiques du vivant. La RédactionRésumé -Cet article rend compte d'une recherche-intervention menée autour de la gestion d'un bien commun : une race locale au Pays basque. Pour dépasser les crises de la coopération entre les acteurs menaçant ce bien commun, une démarche de conception innovante s'appuyant sur la méthode KCP (Knowledge, Concept, Proposals) a été mise en place. Cette méthode, conçue dans le domaine des entreprises, a nécessité des adaptations pour la rendre opérationnelle dans le cas d'une situation distribuée sur un territoire. La démarche a produit trois principaux résultats : la conception d'innovations techniques et organisationnelles, la redéfinition d'un objectif commun permettant l'action collective, la création de capacités d'innovation durables. Notre analyse offre des clés opérationnelles pour la mise en oeuvre de démarches de conception innovante dans le cas de situations distribuées, enjeu des innovations dans les agroécosystèmes.Abstract -Innovative design, a tool to renew the management of common resources. The case of a basque local sheep breed. This article reports an intervention research project on the management and breeding of a local dairy sheep breed in the French basque Country, the Manech Tête Noire. The collective management of this breed and long-term sustainability of this biological resource considered as a "common good" have been threatened by several cooperation crises. To overcome them an innovative participative approach was designed based on the KCP method (Knowledge -Concept -Proposals, Elmquist & Segrestin, 2009). From March to October 2012, we facilitated KCP workshops which brought together local stakeholders and the breed users in order to work out innovative technical and organizational schemes to redesign the breeding program and management system of the breed. This method, initially developed in business and industries, required adaptations so as to be operational in a territorial and distributed context. This approach produced three main results: the design of technical and organizational innovations, the redefining of a common objective for collective action, and the creation of sustainable capacities for innovation. Our analysis of this intervention research based on KCP methods provides useful tools for researchers and stakeholders involved in design processes for the management of ...

Designing Innovative Management for Cultivated Biodiversity: Lessons from a Pioneering Collaboration between French Farmers, Facilitators and Researchers around Participatory Bread Wheat Breeding

“…The KCP ® method has already been described extensively in several articles (see [24,35,37,40]). We thus briefly present the different phases of the method and how they were implemented in our case (see Figure 2).…”

“…In line with research focused on developing participatory design methods in the field of natural resource management (see for instance [24,36,37]), researchers on the INRAE DEAP team, in partnership with a design science researcher (INRAE SADAPT team), proposed to adapt and apply a collective design method to the specific context of participatory wheat breeding. This initiative was launched in response to the partners' call for new approaches that would allow the research team to support local collectives in mobilizing knowledge to design wheat mixture selection and management methods tailored to their specific context.…”

“…This research is part of a body of empirical work aimed at deploying collective design approaches articulating KCP for the development of new natural resource management methods (see for instance [24,36,37,45]). Table 2 presents some of the similarities and differences between the present case and previous ones.…”

“…To this end, various strategies have been adopted across the different cases mentioned in the literature. For instance, Labatut and Hooge [37] sought to balance the intervention capabilities of all participants by prioritizing "experience sharing" structured around examples, over the sharing of "formalized knowledge" based on conceptual models. In our case, the knowledge synthesis sheets replaced the time devoted to expert presentations and made room for collective discussions and receiving feedback from practitioners.…”

“…Compared to other participatory methods, such as ComMod for instance, power asymmetries and conflicts are less explicitly at the core of a KCP process [35]. Nevertheless, in several empirical cases [36,37] the KCP workshops aimed at overcoming a locked-in collaboration situation and defining common projects to bring together stakeholders with diverging interests. However, in our case, issues of conflicts and power between the workshop participants were all the less taken into account that the relations between the stakeholders of participatory breeding are generally not conflictual, and the trust between farmers, facilitators and researchers, built over a long-lasting collaboration, is solid (besides, the atmosphere at both workshops was very friendly).…”