Paper long abstract:

The recently reformed Committee on World Food Security (CFS) constitutes a social innovation at the global scale. For many years, civil society organizations have been organizing themselves to influence international policies related to agriculture and food. They invested in the CFS believing that it could represent an alternative intergovernmental forum to the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organization. Thus, they managed to increase the inclusiveness of this international arena through the creation of a mechanism that facilitated the participation of those groups most affected by food insecurity and malnutrition: peasants, fishers, rural workers, women, landless people, etc.

The reformed CFS has already experienced some success in reaching international agreements, notably the adoption in 2012 of the global guidelines on the governance of land. Yet, the current challenge now lies in the implementation of these agreements. The CFS is mandated to "establish an innovative monitoring mechanism, including the definition of common indicators, to monitor progress towards these agreed upon objectives and actions" (CFS 2009). To this end, an Open Ended Working Group on monitoring has been created.

This communication will explore emerging contestations among CFS stakeholders regarding why monitoring is important and how it should be achieved. Building on existing work in STS, it will show how diverse forms of knowledge and evidence enter into tension. Our hypothesis is that, although CFS stakeholders managed to reach an agreement on substantive standards, they will not manage to reach one on the forms of evaluation, thus leading to an instable coexistence between various normativities.