Concept

There is an urgent need to design transformative pathways that address the wicked problems of the polycrisis. We endorse the imperative to pool collective intelligence of the climate, soils, land degradation, biodiversity, health and food systems expert panels. We recognize the calls from the knowledge communities, in a context of increasing mistrust, of the need to move away from the insufficient linear transfer of knowledge.

We acknowledge that improving the knowledge ecosystem’s efficiency requires producing and sharing actionable knowledge. This takes enlightening pathways and creating the conditions for knowledge to be relevant and contribute to change, while also evaluating the cost of change, its risks and identifying obstacles including power asymmetries.

Making progress on global goals requires improving institutional arrangements where dialogue and convergence can take place, where addressing controversies becomes possible rather than succumbing to polarization, where pathways can be designed, where synergies are proposed and where alignment between local, national and global processes can be achieved. Finally, it requires strengthening the mobilization of diverse academic communities, knowledge holders, members of civil society and the private sector, notably from under-represented communities and the Global South, as being necessary, important, and legitimate participants of the science, policy, action continuum.

In light of these needs, the University of Montpellier, its local academic partners and CGIAR are pleased to re-convene participants of the Montpellier Process on 19-20 March 2024, to further progress on our shared objective of pooling collective intelligence and explore previously identified avenues.  As food systems sit at the heart of a nexus of complex issues, bringing together the blend of challenges to feed, protect and care for today’s and tomorrow’s populations, they are considered as a powerful lever to address interconnected challenges.

The Montpellier Process has established a collaborative and safe working space across leading International Panels that facilitates collective intelligence, strengthening the science-policy-society interfaces. This process is key to unlocking sustainable, equitable and just development, where food systems are a catalytic transformation lever.

The Montpellier process was launched by CGIAR and the Montpellier scientific communities. It is a collectively owned and safe working space for pooling collective intelligence, promoting a connective tissue across local, national and global expertise where science, policy and action can interact. As proposed during the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021 and now with the commitment expressed through the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action signed on 1 December 2023 at the UNFCCC COP28, countries and cities will embark on mapping and implementing transformative food systems pathways, aligned with the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

Mobilizing multiscale and multisectoral expertise to boost such a dynamic is now a priority.

Initiated in early 2021, the Montpellier Process will re-convene the involved scientific community in March 2024, inviting a larger and broader coalition of partners to:

• Prepare joint messaging from global scientific communities calling for pooling collective intelligence across the International Panels and Science-Policy Interfaces to effectively address the polycrisis and related challenges.
• Facilitate and activate connection and cooperation across International Panels and a diversity of science-policy interfaces, including cross feedback on reports, alignment on definitions, collective working groups, data-sharing, and joint reporting.
• Support learning communities of practice optimizing collective expertise, including both academic, local and indigenous knowledge, and science-policy interfaces at local, national and international levels and across scales, i.e. mobilizing global expert panels’ knowledge for action at local and national levels and local knowledge at national and global scales.
• Define how this community can better align and coordinate its collaboration to contribute to the UN International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development 2024-2033 and in global fora such as CFS and UN Conventions COPs.

Increase the representation and participation of actors from the Global South and of multiple and diverse scientific disciplines and knowledge systems, notably indigenous and local knowledge and those of marginalized communities, to ensure that their voices, perspectives and realities are included. Taken together, these actions, when supported by the Montpellier Process, provide real potential to translate Expert Panels recommendations into credible and scalable action.

Organize an international event that gathers thought leaders engaged in IPCC, HLPE-FSN, IPBES, OHHLEP and additional experts of international panels and Science-Policy Interfaces, to provide the platform for achieving this ambition.

Building on the current momentum of the Montpellier Process, and more specifically the 2-3 October 2023 Pooling Collective Intelligence (PCI) gathering, the purpose of this larger and more inclusive March 2024 event is to offer a safe space for global expert panels to work together and design a joint offer to the global community to improve science’s contribution to achieving the SDGs through effective food systems transformation. Convening 200-300 individuals, the March event aims to socialize the Montpellier Process, gathering inputs from a broader community, with facilitated discussions, dialogues and workshops. The aim is to further define PCI activities and collaborations.

Where the Montpellier Process offers a relevant, pertinent and safe space for collaboration across Expert Panels and Science Policy Interfaces, as agreed in October 2023,  this is conditional on intentional targeted invitations with the appropriate mix of practitioners and institutional representatives from diverse regions and scales of action (sub-national, national, regional and international); on maintaining strong political commitment; on investment in a careful process and content preparation; on the application of Chatham House rules in the space encouraging respect and free expression; on attention to timing given multiple global processes already in play.  The March 2024 event will create the conditions for the candidate outcomes described above.

 The event will identify and agree on a joint roadmap to pool collective intelligence for action towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and beyond .

Program will be structured by:

• #1 Knowledge A comprehensive session to share expert panels’ ambitions, obstacles and demands.
• #2 Intelligence An interactive session on moving beyond fragmented intelligence to identify the missing elements that unlock collective intelligence (disciplinary and systemic knowledge, context adapted policy design, dialogue processes, across scales, etc.).
• #3 Action A final session on “pooling collective intelligence” to agree and commit to a joint roadmap forward.