Year 2015 was a critical political and diplomatic milestone. The three complementary international summits of Addis Ababa on Financing Development Aid, of New York with the Adoption of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and of Paris with the Framework Convention on climate change (UNFCCC) and the universal agreement on climate, set up a renewed and ambitious global framework for action towards sustainable development. Development actors are gathering all through 2016, in order to establish implementation frameworks and global partnerships for translating the SDGs into reality.

The international scientific conference: “Agri-Chains and Sustainable Development: linking local and global dynamics” is going to be held with the ambition of taking part to this global process, bringing the focus on the role of value chains in the transition towards sustainable development.

World agricultural systems are at the heart of global challenges, being at the same time threats but also solutions to sustainability challenges: biomass supply and food security, poverty reduction, unemployment, health, climate and energy transition, biodiversity and ecosystem services, desertification, pollutions and resource scarcity and waste. In a globalized context marked notably by intensified commercial and financial flows, increasing sanitary risks and by rapid consumer behavior evolutions, profound technical, economic and social transformations take place in value chains. Linking agricultural production with the other economic sectors and ultimately with consumers, it is through value chains that local and global challenges to sustainability meet and that local and global actors experiment interlinked or common solutions. Increased environmental and social concerns urge value chain actors and development practitioners to propose methods and tools to improve sustainability, and public and private actors to invent new forms of regulations in connection with value chains. Agricultural value chains are therefore key spaces where the implementation of the SDGs is constructed and negotiated and where multistakeholders’ partnerships are defined.

This event is part of a broader effort to contribute to debates on the new international agenda and to mobilize research communities in the transition towards sustainable development. Through fostering the acquisition, sharing and dissemination of knowledge and practices, analysis and debates aim at:

• Providing decision makers at local, national and international levels, with information on policy and strategy formulation for ensuring transitions towards sustainable development, using agricultural value chains as effective levers for action;
• Engaging further scientists and experts into innovative experiences for an inclusive and sustainable economy and in imagining new models of development;
• Shedding light on new patterns of public / private partnerships and investments and of multistakeholders’ alliances for sustainable value chains.

We expect between 150 and 250 high level speakers and participants from all over the world, with a strong representation from developing countries, where tropical agricultural value chains play a major role. Key actors from these countries (researchers, policy makers, negotiators, donors, territorial authorities, professional organizations, civil society, and grassroots actors) will be invited, with their participation being sponsored when needed.