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# Enhancing capacities for sustainability transition policy design: Lessons from French pesticide reduction plans

Viviane Trèves, Mourad Hannachi, Jean-Marc Meynard

► To cite this version:

Viviane Trèves, Mourad Hannachi, Jean-Marc Meynard. Enhancing capacities for sustainability transition policy design: Lessons from French pesticide reduction plans. Agricultural Systems, 2025, 223, pp.104175. 10.1016/j.agsy.2024.104175. hal-04803908

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https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-04803908v1

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# Agricultural Systems
## Enhancing Capacities for Sustainability Transition Policy Design:

## Lessons From French Pesticide Reduction Plans

--Manuscript Draft--

<table><tr><td>Manuscript Number:</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Article Type:</td><td>Research Paper</td></tr><tr><td>Keywords:</td><td>pesticide reduction; lock-in; policymaking process; policy capacity; management science; sociotechnical transition</td></tr><tr><td>Corresponding Author:</td><td>Viviane Trèves, PhD<br>Université Paris-Saclay<br>FRANCE</td></tr><tr><td>First Author:</td><td>Viviane Trèves, PhD</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">Order of Authors:</td><td>Viviane Trèves, PhD</td></tr><tr><td>Mourad Hannachi, PhD</td></tr><tr><td>Jean-Marc Meynard, PhD</td></tr><tr><td>Abstract:</td><td><strong>CONTEXT</strong><br>Public policies are key levers to support transitions towards sustainable agri-food systems, especially in the presence of a lock-in. To better design public policies, one important challenge for policymakers is to improve policy design processes, while ensuring an active participation of stakeholders.<br><br><strong>OBJECTIVE</strong><br>This article is aimed at identifying elements that limit policymakers in managing suitable collective policymaking processes for sustainability transitions.<br><br><strong>METHODS</strong><br>We studied the collective elaboration of the French pesticide reduction plans. Pesticides policies are particularly complex because of the presence of a lock-in around these chemicals. To do so, we built a narration of the policy process organized by policymakers, based on semi-structured interviews and an analysis of the grey literature. We then reflected on what policymakers need to better manage a policy process to overcome the lock-in around pesticide use, using the "management situation" concept.<br><br><strong>RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS</strong><br>Our results show that to design transition policies adapted to a lock-in situation, policymakers need to develop four types of interdependent "policy capacities" (skills and resources): capacities to support collective sensemaking about the implications of the lock-in, to co-design interdependent and multi-level instruments, to co-design suitable implementation structures and to ensure learning. These results highlight an issue of adaptability and dynamic capabilities in public organizations.<br><br><strong>SIGNIFICANCE</strong><br>Our results provide concrete proposals to improve policy processes for transition policies aiming at systemic transformations in the agri-food sector: there is a need to develop new methods, tools, analytical resources and training programs for policymakers, to support the development of the policy capacities identified. These results also suggest several avenues for future action-research between public management, systemic agronomy, sustainability and design sciences.</td></tr><tr><td>Suggested Reviewers:</td><td>Nathalie Raulet-Croset<br>raulet.croset.iae@univ-paris1.fr<br><br>Niklas Möhring<br>nmoehring@ethz.ch</td></tr></table>
Markus Vinnari
markus.vinnari@helsinki.fr

Susana Borras
sbo.ioa@cbs.dk
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# Enhancing Capacities for Sustainability Transition Policy Design:
## Lessons From French Pesticide Reduction Plans

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Viviane Trèves*, PhD: [Viviane.treves@agroparistech.fr](mailto:Viviane.treves@agroparistech.fr)

Mourad Hannachi, PhD: [Mourad.hannachi@inrae.fr](mailto:Mourad.hannachi@inrae.fr)

Jean-Marc Meynard, PhD: [jean-marc.meynard@inrae.fr](mailto:jean-marc.meynard@inrae.fr)

UMR SADAPT, INRAE, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay.

Campus Agro Paris-Saclay, 22 place de l'Agronomie, 91120 Palaiseau, France

*Corresponding author

## Abstract

### CONTEXT

Public policies are key levers to support transitions towards sustainable agri-food systems, especially in the presence of a lock-in. To better design public policies, one important challenge for policymakers is to improve policy design processes, while ensuring an active participation of stakeholders.

### OBJECTIVE

This article is aimed at identifying elements that limit policymakers in managing suitable collective policymaking processes for sustainability transitions.

### METHODS

We studied the collective elaboration of the French pesticide reduction plans. Pesticides policies are particularly complex because of the presence of a lock-in around these chemicals. To do so, we built a narration of the policy process organized by policymakers, based on semi-structured interviews and an analysis of the grey literature. We then reflected on what policymakers need to better manage a policy process to overcome the lock-in around pesticide use, using the "management situation" concept.
## 34 RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

Our results show that to design transition policies adapted to a lock-in situation, policymakers need to develop four types of interdependent “policy capacities” (skills and resources): capacities to support collective sensemaking about the implications of the lock-in, to co-design interdependent and multi-level instruments, to co-design suitable implementation structures and to ensure learning. These results highlight an issue of adaptability and dynamic capabilities in public organizations.

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## 42 SIGNIFICANCE

Our results provide concrete proposals to improve policy processes for transition policies aiming at systemic transformations in the agri-food sector: there is a need to develop new methods, tools, analytical resources and training programs for policymakers, to support the development of the policy capacities identified. These results also suggest several avenues for future action-research between public management, systemic agronomy, sustainability and design sciences.

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## 49 Graphical abstract

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# Enhancing Capacities for Sustainability Transition Policy Design: Lessons from French Pesticide Reduction Plans

* Public policies are key levers to support transitions towards sustainable agriculture

* Pesticide reduction policies need to be systemic to overcome lock-ins

* In liberal democracies, policymakers must ensure the active participation of stakeholders to policy formulation processes

What are the elements that limit policymakers in managing suitable collective policymaking processes for sustainability transitions ?

**Case study:**

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The formulation of the French pesticide reduction plans (2007-2021) aimed at a -50% in pesticide use

**Theoretical framework:**

« Management situation » concept (Girin, 2011)

**Data collection:**

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Grey literature

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26 semi-structured interviews

**Findings:**

Policymakers need to develop four types of « policy capacities »

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /></figure>

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55 **Keywords:** pesticide reduction; lock-in; policymaking process; policy capacity; management
56 science; sociotechnical transition

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58 **Highlights:**
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60 Pesticide reduction policies are particularly complex because of the presence of a lock-in around these chemicals.

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This article aims at identifying elements that limit policymakers in managing suitable policymaking processes for pesticide reduction.

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• Our results show that sustainability policy processes are not adapted to systemic transitions characteristics.

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• Policymakers need specific policy capacities for sense-making, systemic instruments design and implementation.

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• We highlight an issue of dynamic capabilities in the public sector.
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# 1. Introduction

Public policies are a key lever to support transitions towards sustainable agriculture, and one of the main challenges for research in this field is to identify ways to support policymakers to improve the efficiency of sustainability policy design. Prior research has illustrated the importance of both policy instruments and policy processes, as policy processes influence the choice and content of instruments (Howlett et al., 2009; Voss and Bornemann, 2011; Jordan and Turnpenny, 2015; Kivimaa and Kern, 2016; Rogge and Reichardt, 2016; Howlett and Mukherjee, 2018).

Developing better designed policymaking processes requires careful consideration of the characteristics of the policy area concerned (Mukherjee and Bali, 2018). For sustainability transitions, the literature highlights several characteristics that need to be taken into account (Köhler et al., 2019):

* Transitions are a collective phenomenon: they correspond to the transformation of a sociotechnical system, which can be defined as "a collective of stakeholders, their networks, their practices and knowledge, the technologies they use, their collective representations, and the standards and rules they adopt" (Meynard et al., 2017 - from Rip and Kemp, 1998).

* Supporting a transition involves defining multidimensional actions, which integrate the spatial dimension (from the local to the international level), the position in relation to the dominant sociotechnical regime (niche, regime, landscape - Geels, 2002) and the various links in a system.

* Transitions are often hindered by lock-ins that excludes breakthrough innovations that are not compatible with the dominant sociotechnical system (Kuokkanen et al., 2017). This system is stabilized by the interdependencies among its components, the alignment of its standards and the difficulty of acting on material artifacts and networks (Geels, 2004; Belmin et al., 2018). This implies that the transformations of the different links of the system must be done in such a way as to allow their co-evolution and avoid blockages of one part by another.

* Transitions towards sustainability present a strong "normative directionality": the targeted objective integrates better health of the considered ecosystems.

* Transitions present a high level of uncertainty and multiple controversies: There are numerous possible transition pathways, with uncertain feasibility, and the desirability of any particular pathway can be contested by the multiple actors involved.
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103 In liberal democracies, policymakers must be able to take those elements into account while
104 managing a collective policy formulation process. Since the end of the XXth century and following
105 claims from civil society, liberal States have evolved to make policymaking more collaborative
106 and transparent. Today, especially in the environmental sectors, public policies must be designed
107 – to a certain extent at least – with the active participation of a wide variety of stakeholders
108 (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2012; Bali and Ramesh, 2018).
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110 Policymakers must therefore organize collective design processes capable of effectively
111 harnessing the complexity and systemic aspects of sustainability transitions. This article aims at
112 identifying elements that limit policymakers in doing so in the agri-food sector, in order to propose
113 ways to address these limitations.
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115 To do so, it seemed most appropriate to start from a detailed study of practices of policy makers.
116 We therefore based our analysis on a case-study: the elaboration of pesticide reduction plans in
117 France. Public policies on pesticides give a perfect example of the difficulties developing public
118 policies that act at the sociotechnical system level, because of the central place occupied by these
119 chemicals in Western cropping systems. In several countries, a lock-in phenomenon has been
120 highlighted around pesticides (Wilson and Tisdell, 2001; Vanloqueren and Baret, 2009; Lamine
121 et al., 2010; Kuokkanen et al., 2017; Magrini et al., 2018; Oliver et al., 2018). Achieving significant
122 reduction therefore requires a radical redesign of production systems simultaneously at the level
123 of farms, territories, sectors and markets. It thus requires public policies that induce coordinated
124 changes of the different actors of the system, in order to prevent the transformation of one part of
125 the system from being blocked by another (Guichard et al., 2017; Kuokkanen et al., 2017; Mörhing
126 et al., 2020). In France, reducing environmental and health nuisances associated with the use of
127 pesticides has been a public policy objective since 2007, when the country set an objective of
128 reducing pesticide use by 50% over 10 years, "if possible". To achieve this goal, the State
129 developed the Ecophyto plans with a high level of stakeholder involvement, but those did not
130 achieve a reduction of pesticide use on the territory (Government of the French Republic, 2020).
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132 We analyzed the elaboration of the Ecophyto plans between 2007 and 2021 to identify elements
133 that public managers would need to improve policymaking processes and formulate plans able to
134 overcome the lock-in. In the rest of this article, we first present our theoretical framework (part 2),
135 and then, detail our case selection and methods (part 3). In part 4, we show how collective
policymaking was managed in Ecophyto (part 4). We then identify missing elements that hindered the State's ability to manage the creation of a transition plan (part 5). Based on this analysis, we formalize three pillars for improved policymaking processes and the corresponding capacities required to do so in the cross-sectional discussion (part 6). We conclude in part 7.

## 2. Theoretical Framework

While Policy Sciences have developed several approaches to analyze policy processes, such as the phase, the stream or the rounds models (Teisman, 2000), we looked for a framework that would specifically address the collective aspects of contemporary policymaking and would be prescriptive on the fundamental elements needed to manage such a situation, to help us draw operational recommendations. We therefore mobilized the “management situation” concept brought forward by Girin (2011).

A management situation is a situation where collective action is made manageable. It is a situation where “participants are united and must accomplish, in a determined time, a collective action leading to a result submitted to an external evaluation” (Girin, 2011):

* The participants in a situation are both active in achieving the result and affected by the external evaluation. Other actors can contribute to the situation without being affected by the evaluation, in which case they are not considered participants (Girin et al., 2016).

* The idea of "result" does not imply that there is collective adherence to the objective: each participant may have their own reasons for participating (obligation, opportunity, etc.), but the obligation or intent to achieve the result dominates and unites the actions of the collective.

* The notion of evaluation highlights that achievement of the result is not defined by the collective itself but responds to external criteria.

* A management situation can be composed of several nested sub-situations. These are generally linked together by the creation of delegations.

At the start of a management situation, participants face strong uncertainties about the actions to be taken. They initiate a “process of inquiry”, which is a sensemaking process (Weick, 2005) aimed at creating knowledge to reduce uncertainties (Journé and Raulet-Croset, 2008). The inquiry does not correspond to a revelation of the attributes of a system but rather to the actors’ construction of their vision of this system and its means of management. The confrontation of the participants’ subjective interpretations (e.g: what levers for reduction are really realistic or
desirable?) allows progressive simplification of the problem and the emergence of compatible
interpretations. "Compatible interpretations" are interpretations that may differ but are sufficiently
close that the participants can work together to achieve the result. The compatibility is therefore
subjectively perceived by the participants. This simplification allows the translation of the
collective interpretations into actions.

The management situation concept can be used as a tool for analyzing the evolution of the
constituent elements of a situation to be managed, in particular when the latter presents strong
uncertainties (Journé and Raulet-Croset, 2008; Charrier et al. 2020). It is relevant for Ecophyto,
as the participants had to collectively define the means of reducing pesticides despite strong
uncertainties on the levers to be used.

This concept is applicable to transition public policies and sheds unique light on them, for four
reasons. Firstly, policymakers in liberal democracies are confronted with the need to manage
collective policy processes. Secondly, the significance of the uncertainties and controversies
around a transition makes it useful to use a management perspective where the starting point is
defined as an indeterminate situation, and where understanding of the actors is built as it goes.
The importance of the "inquiry process" in the management situation concept is therefore
particularly adapted to our question. Thirdly, the normative objective of a transition
(sustainability) echoes the notion of result of a management situation: even if actors have
subjective understandings of the problem, collective action is directed toward a result that can
be assessed. Finally, the pragmatic roots of Girin's concept invites us to closely analyze the
micro-level, operational actions that policymakers take to give life to the policymaking process.

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## 3. Methodology

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### 3.1. Case selection

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The policymaking process that we analyzed started in 2007, when France set an ambitious
target of reducing the use of pesticides by 50% over 10 years, which the State embodied in the
"Ecophyto Plans" (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 2008; Ministry of Agriculture and
Fisheries and Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, 2015; Government of
the French Republic, 2019). The first version was launched in 2008 and revised in 2015 and
2019. To elaborate those policies, the State positioned itself as the manager of a collective

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action through multi-actor processes. The plans consisted of a wide mix of public policy instruments, some binding, others aimed at training, research or support for the actors (table 1). However, despite several years of implementation, and even if the numbers have been decreasing since 2017, the use of pesticides increased in France by 13,8% in three-year average between the periods 2009-2011 and 2018-2020¹ (Government of the French Republic, 2020 – fig. 2). The literature studying the weaknesses of the Ecophyto plans have criticized their lack of sufficiently binding or incentivizing instruments, but also their failure to take into account the presence of a lock-in by mostly targeting farmers, their advisors, and, in a later phase, distributors (Guichard et al., 2017; Aulagnier, 2020; Dufour et al., 2021) (table 1).

We selected this case for multiple reasons. Pesticide reduction policies are particularly interesting because of the lock-in that has been identified around these chemicals in Western cropping systems, which require instruments inducing system-wide transformations. France is one of the few countries to have established such an ambitious policy objective early on, with a focus on pesticides quantity reduction rather than risk management and incremental change. The need for multi-level radical change was acknowledged early in the French policy process (Butault et al., 2010), which suggests that the limitations to developing relevant policy instruments did not arise because of a lack of understanding of the systemic aspect of a transition. Furthermore, it allowed us to benefit from a historical perspective on a policy that was kept under various governments and evolved over time. Lastly, in France, the State is an important actor in the agri-food sector, the Ecophyto plans had relatively substantial funding, and the policy benefited from a reasonably important place in the political agenda. Policymakers aimed to develop a process that allowed for a high degree of customization (Howlett and Mukherjee, 2018). This setting enabled us to analyze tools, processes and organizational routines used by policymakers to manage collective design processes for sustainability transitions, rather than being limited by potential constraints such as human or financial resources, or policymakers' legitimacy.

<table><thead><tr><td>Main instruments</td><td>Description</td><td>Main actors targeted</td><td>Method of delegation</td></tr></thead><tbody></tbody></table>

<footnote n="1">¹ In 2019-2021, the use of pesticides came back to its original level of 2009-2011, in three-year average, if you consider the most recent preliminary data from 2021.</footnote>
<table><thead><tr><th colspan="4">Ecophyto 1</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>DEPHY farm network</td><td>Network of pilot farms accompanied by a technical adviser, with the aim of reducing the use of pesticides and developing new technical references</td><td>Farmers and agricultural advisory services</td><td>- Strategic steering committee made up of representatives of the actors involved in Ecophyto<br/>- Operational steering committee hosted mainly within a public organization representing and advising farmers (Chambers of Agriculture France)</td></tr><tr><td>'Certiphytos', phytosanitary certificates</td><td>Training allowing the obtaining of an individual certificate, compulsory for all professionals using, advising or marketing pesticides</td><td>Farmers, professional user of pesticides, agricultural advisory services</td><td>- The training courses were delivered by competing private organizations. Programs were defined by regulation, and could be controlled by the administration (Ansaloni, 2017)</td></tr><tr><td>Plant Health Bulletin</td><td>Free information bulletin on phytosanitary pressure around a crop in a given region, based on a network of observations, and aimed at avoiding phytosanitary treatments not justified by the presence of pests.</td><td>Farmers and agricultural advisory services</td><td>- Creation of a regional committee for epidemio-surveillance, chaired by the president of the regional chamber of agriculture and bringing together agricultural organizations and the State administration<br/>- The regional State administration verified that the decisions taken were in conformity with those taken at the national level.<br/>- The data was collected and analyzed by various agricultural organizations (Aulagnier, 2020)</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>Fee for<br>Diffuse<br>Pollution</td><td>Levy on the sale of pesticides used to finance the actions of the Ecophyto plans</td><td>Farmers</td><td>- Levies were taken by the agency in charge of biodiversity and managed via the Water Agencies.<br>- The allocation of funding within the Ecophyto plans was validated by the stakeholders, grouped within the Advisory Governance Committee - which would be abolished in 2016</td></tr></table>

### Ecophyto 2 (additions compared to Ecophyto 1)

<table><tr><td>Pesticide<br>Saving<br>Certificates</td><td>Certificates aimed at obligating distributors of pesticides to promote the implementation, on farms, of actions recognized as enabling the reduced use of pesticides. Each practice is linked to a quantified level of product savings, and distributors must achieve a certain level of savings defined at the national level. The financial penalty originally provided for was subsequently removed.</td><td>Distributors (cooperatives and trading companies)</td><td>- The recognized actions were defined by a committee of technical experts led by the National Institute of Agronomic Research, on the basis of proposals that could come from the actors<br>- The distributor obligation levels were defined by agents from the Ministry of Agriculture (Aulagnier, 2020)</td></tr></table>

### Ecophyto 2+ (additions compared to Ecophyto 2)

<table><tr><td>Advising/sales<br>separation</td><td>Organizations that provide providing advisory services to farmers on pesticides use are prohibited from selling pesticides, and vice versa. Organizations who chose to keep their sales activities could still advise farmers on alternative products to pesticides.</td><td>Cooperatives<br>and trading<br>companies</td><td>This instrument is a regulatory one. It was managed directly by agents from the Ministry of Agriculture. Those agents worked both at the national level and in local representations of the ministry.</td></tr></table>
Table 1: Main instruments of Ecophyto 1, 2 and 2+ plans, main actors targeted by those instruments and their terms of delegation (excluding substance prohibition) These instruments were deemed to be central to the Ecophyto plans on the basis of (i) the extent of their financing relative to the total financing of the plans or (ii) the importance given by the actors during the interviews or within the gray literature.

## 3.2. Data collection and analysis

To collect data, we carried out semi-structured interviews with the actors involved in the construction of the Ecophyto plans. To identify the first informants, we analyzed archives and articles and conducted several exploratory interviews. We then proceeded according to a snowball approach, with each actor indicating other actors to contact. We continued the interviews until no more new information emerged and we had saturated the diversity of actors involved. The differences in the number of interviews by category of actor mainly resulted from the variation in the size of the structures and the difference in the number of people in charge of the Ecophyto plans who have succeeded one another within the same structure. In total, 26 semi-structured interviews, lasting a total of 37 hours and 20 minutes were conducted and transcribed. Our work is based on these interviews (table 2) and a corpus of secondary data made up of written archives on the Ecophyto plans (appendix A).

The collected data was first coded inductively with the Nvivo® software. We followed the principles of Grounded Theory (Corbin and Strauss, 2014) to identify patterns and recurring themes and select our theoretical framework (Kinniburgh, 2023): the “management situation” concept (Girin, 2011). The codes were then grouped into higher-level categories based on this “management situation” concept and interviews were deductively coded another time using those categories. Examples of codes used for the higher-level categories are “Difficulties to manage the inquiry process”, “Absence of collective sense-making”, “Definition of the result”, “Generation of ideas for instruments”, or “Difficulties with implementation”. To avoid memorization and social desirability biases (Butori and Parguel, 2010), we used the principle of data triangulation (Flick et al., 2004). We then mobilized the data through a narrative approach (Dumez, 2016) on the development of Ecophyto plans. The narrative approach is a qualitative methodology (Dumez and Jeunemaître, 2005; Dumez, 2016), which consists of building stories with a starting point, a final state, sequences that have relatively homogeneous dynamics building the pathway between the two, and tipping points that initiate transitions between sequences. Narrative approaches can be
used on heterogeneous data (quantitative data, grey literature, interviews, etc.) to analyze a
process over time. To build a rigorous narration, one needs first to establish descriptive and multi-
dimensional chronologies to verify if one event has occurred before another and can therefore
have caused it. Then, based on the data collected and its analysis, one can draw a narrative
diagram highlighting the starting and final points, the sequences and the tipping points (fig. 1) to
support the narration.

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<table>
   <thead>
    <tr>
     <td>
      Type of actor
     </td>
     <td>
      Number of people interviewed
     </td>
    </tr>
   </thead>
   <tbody>
    <tr>
     <td>
      Ministry in charge of agriculture
     </td>
     <td>
      4
     </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>
      Ministry in charge of the environment
     </td>
     <td>
      2
     </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>
      Research institutes and technical institutes
     </td>
     <td>
      7
     </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>
      Agricultural advisory organizations
     </td>
     <td>
      5
     </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>
      Environmental NGOs
     </td>
     <td>
      2
     </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>
      Organizations representing agricultural companies (pesticides companies and cooperatives)
     </td>
     <td>
      4
     </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>
      Agricultural union and political figures
     </td>
     <td>
      2
     </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>
      Total
     </td>
     <td>
      26
     </td>
    </tr>
   </tbody>
  </table>

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277 Table 2: Number of people interviewed according to the type of structure
278

279 **4. Results**

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281 The overall dynamic of the Ecophyto plans is summarized in fig.1.

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<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>fig.1: Narrative diagram of the evolution of the management situation for the transition toward pesticide reduction</figcaption></figure>

**4.1. Analisis: Increased focus on reducing overall pesticide use**

Since the 1980s, the use of pesticides has faced increasing criticism for its environmental and health impacts, gradually leading to significant controversies (Pellissier, 2021). In order to contribute to the debate, in 2005, the National Institute for Agronomic Research (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique or INRA) produced a report on the impacts of pesticides (Aubertot et al., 2005), which defended the need to and the technical feasibility of reducing the overall use of phytosanitary products. Far from ending the controversies, the publication of the report highlighted the differences of opinion between actors. On the one hand, professional agricultural organizations – technical institutes, the majority union, the main advisory organization, cooperatives and industry representatives – opposed any significant reduction target and criticized the methods used in the study. On the other hand, environmental NGOs and actors in the Organic Agriculture sector, were supported by several INRA researchers. Although these two groups were not completely homogeneous, this disagreement regarding the feasibility and desirability of an objective of global reduction of the use of pesticides constituted a dividing line which would be maintained over time.

In an attempt to strengthen the arguments in favor of reducing pesticides, ministries commissioned a new report from the INRA in 2007, entitled "Ecophyto R&D" (Butault et al.,
307 2010), with the objective of identifying the techniques available to enable farmers to ambitiously
308 reduce the use of pesticides.

309
## 4.2. Starting point – Initiation of an institutionalized multi-stakeholder situation

311
In 2007, following pressure from civil society, the newly elected President, Nicolas Sarkozy,  
312 organized the Grenelle Environment Forum – a broad consultation process on environmental  
313 issues (Boy et al., 2012). This culminated in setting an objective of "reducing the use of  
314 pesticides by 50% over 10 years, if possible". A 50% reduction was seen by the NGOs and  
315 INRA researchers as the approximate level where it becomes necessary to radically redesign  
316 farming systems, in a way that would also facilitate meeting other sustainability goals. The  
317 wording "if possible" was added following pressure from agricultural organizations (Guichard et  
318 al., 2017).

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## 4.3. Sequence 1 – Initiation of a management situation for the collective elaboration of Ecophyto 1

324 It was in this context of actor division that the administrative departments of the Ministry of  
325 Agriculture had to ensure the drafting of a plan for the operationalization of the Grenelle Forum's  
326 objective. Anxious to preserve the multi-actor dynamic resulting from the Grenelle Forum, the  
327 Minister of Agriculture, Michel Barnier, launched an operational committee, called the "Paillotin  
328 Operational committee" after its chairman, which brought together all the stakeholders to  
329 collectively develop the national plan and initiated the management situation. The participants  
330 actively engaged in the Operational committee tasks, which was seen as a constructive place to  
331 work despite fundamental disagreements (table 4, verbatim 1a, 1b)

332
333 To equip the process of inquiry and in order to create compatible interpretations of the objective,  
334 the policymakers of the Ministry of Agriculture mostly mobilized scientific and expert reports and  
335 presentation that were debated within working groups. The orientations of the "Ecophyto R&D"  
336 study were adapted to shed light on the "possibility" and the conditions of achieving the Grenelle  
337 Forum's objective, and thus legitimize it (Aulagnier, 2020). However, this mode of exploration  
338 failed to convince the agricultural world, which did not accept the results of Ecophyto R&D  
339 (Butault et al., 2010). In their eyes, the report did not sufficiently detail the concrete implications  
340 of the objective of 50% reduction over 10 years for each link of the agri-food systems.
341
342 To translate this exploration into concrete actions, the collective was not totally free in their choices. As early as November 2007, when the Paillotin Operational committee's work had not yet started, the Minister of Agriculture had already mentioned the centrality of 3 instruments: research and development, training for farmers, and strengthening the pest surveillance networks (Aulagnier, 2020), hereby reusing old ideas of public action (table 4, verbatim 2) and excluding any strong regulatory or economic incentive tool. Within these boundaries, the participants proposed ideas coming out of the working groups or of their respective structures.
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349 The plan proposed by the Paillotin Operational committee detailed and expanded on the elements proposed by the Minister and added a few aspects to it, such as the creation of monitoring indicators or a communication component.
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353 One of the main instruments, the Plant Health Bulletin, a bulletin alerting farmers to phytosanitary pressure in their regions (table 1) was a recycling of agricultural warnings, an instrument that pre-dated the plan. The Bulletin was not designed for the Ecophyto plan.
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356 Instead, the Ecophyto plan was a funding opportunity for it (Guichard et al., 2017; Aulagnier, 2020; Interviews).
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359 The DEPHY network of innovative farms (table 1) constitutes an exception in the way it was designed and is therefore considered by many actors to be the major innovation of the Ecophyto plan (Barbier, 2017). The DEPHY network was the result of a long design process by INRA researchers, commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture (Butault et al. 2010). Nevertheless, the temporal objective (achieving a 50% reduction over 10 years) was not sufficiently taken into account in the design process: the designers of DEPHY tried to develop an instrument that could support pesticide reduction, without assessing the time it would take to reach its goal and adapting the instrument with this temporal constraint in mind (table 4, verbatim 3).
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368 The Paillotin Operational committee's proposals took the shape of a consensual, but weakly binding plan. Without proper exploration tools of the entire implications of pesticides reduction for all actors of the agri-food chain, the committee also failed at taking into account the presence of a lock-in, and therefore mainly targeted farmers and their advisers (Guichard et al., 2017).
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372 They did not account for the effects of their practices' interdependence with other links in the sociotechnical system, such as cooperatives or agro-industries (table 1).
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Despite diverging opinions within the group, the plan was validated by all the participants.
Indeed, numerous proposals seemed to go in the right direction for the NGOs (table 4, verbatim
4). Those proposals were mostly non-binding, and some represented significant funding
opportunities for agricultural organizations, encouraging them to stay in the discussion
(Aulagnier, 2020).

The Ecophyto 1 plan was published in 2008 and largely incorporated the Paillotin Operational
committee proposals. The first years were dedicated to operational implementation of the plan.

The ministry set up numerous working groups to monitor the plan components and discuss the
points of disagreement that persisted, in particular regarding the most controversial aspects: the
possibility and desirability of reducing the use of products, and the definition of appropriate
monitoring indicators (Aulagnier, 2020). These working groups were appreciated by the various
participants for their ability to provide spaces for discussion and mutual acquaintance for people
who did not normally work together (agricultural and environmental actors in particular) (table 4,
verbatim 5). However, little by little, the limits of collective action started appearing. Despite the
density of the discussion arenas, policymakers were not able to reach an agreement among the
participants. The slowness of this process weakened certain participants' confidence in
collective action (table 4, verbatim 6).

Moreover, the richness of the discussion spaces also made them difficult to follow and led to the
fragmentation of the plan. Certain participants, especially NGOs, lacked the resources to be
present in all of the working groups. The "Ecophyto system" gradually became more and more
complex. The Ministry of Agriculture, due to insufficient dedicated human resources and a
desire to involve stakeholders, delegated a large part of the implementation to different actors
(table 1). For each important instrument, groups of varying composition made operational
decisions impacting the functioning of the instruments themselves. Full monitoring of
implementation was almost impossible (table 4, verbatim 7) and it reinforced the fragmented
aspect of the plans. There were few links between the different instrument management groups,
which could then evolve over the course of the discussions without necessarily seeking
convergence with the others (table 4, verbatim 8a, 8b).

These delegations had another effect: the ministries sought to use this mode of operation to enlist the actors from the dominant regime in the process, and ensure their commitment (table 3, verbatim 9). In France, agricultural organizations have a significant influence and agricultural policies have historically been carried out on a "co-management" model (Aulagnier, 2020). This structuring allowed the delegated actors to acquire a certain power over the shaping of the instruments for which they were responsible. They were thus sometimes able to attenuate the objectives set out in the plan. Ansaloni (2017) shows, for example, that the private actors in charge of training sometimes redefined the content of Certiphyto phytosanitary certificates (table 1) to avoid presenting alternative techniques to pesticides. Our interview with a member of a technical institute, who considered the -50% goal as too ambitious, led to a similar conclusion (table 4, verbatim 10).

As the implementation started, it slowly became apparent that the 50% reduction goal would not be achieved as rapidly as had been hoped (fig. 2). Nonetheless, the policymakers were unable to generate compatible interpretations among the participants about the underlying reasons for why pesticide use did not diminish. Indeed, the main indicator was the NODU (fig. 2). It was designed to follow the national evolution of pesticide use, to assess the failure or success of the plans. It did not give indications on the evolution of farmers' practices, neither depending on the region, nor on the cropping system. There were no indicators or processes developed to create adequate knowledge allowing actors to explain the evolution in the use of pesticides (table 4, verbatim 11a, 11b). The environmental actors saw the lack of reduction as a lack of will on the part of the agricultural profession and proof of the need to take more drastic actions. The agricultural organizations saw it as illustrating what they expected: the objectives set were unattainable and should be modified. The latter also defended that the plan's indicators did not give a realistic view of the significant efforts made by farmers. This lack of compatible interpretations reinforced the existing divisions within the collective.
<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 2: Evolution of pesticide use in the agriculture sector in France (NODU in million ha).</figcaption></figure>

Source: French Ministry of Agriculture and Food, 2022

NODU is the official indicator created to monitor the Ecophyto plans and follow pesticide use in France. It is calculated from sales data of pesticide distributors and corresponds to the theoretical surface that would be treated yearly with pesticides at the maximum approved doses. Preliminary 2021 data are shown in dotted lines on the graph.

The Ecophyto process then continued to deteriorate little by little, but the actors remained involved. In 2012, a new minister of Agriculture, Stéphane Le Foll, started a new exploratory process to identify new possible policy instruments (Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, 2012). He commissioned several reports, in particular on agricultural extension, taxation or Pesticide Saving Certificates (table 1).

## 4.6. Turning Point 2 – Evaluation and revision of Ecophyto 1: Failure to regain momentum through “top-down” management

In 2014, an overall evaluation of the Ecophyto 1 plan was launched and lead to a shift in the design process of the new Ecophyto 2 plan. The ministries adopted a more “top-down” approach of consultation and drafting within the administrations. The inquiry process was no longer entirely carried out by the actors in the management situation, but was taken over by the administration. To give political weight to the evaluation, the administration asked a deputy to
take charge of the work. Rather than supporting a collective inquiry process like in the first Ecophyto working groups, the deputy consulted with all the stakeholders separately, conducted field visits and consulted the expert reports previously commissioned. His work also had an assumed political dimension (table 4, verbatim 12). His report (Potier, 2014) served as a basis for officials from the Ministries of Agriculture and the Environment, who joined the management of the plan, to draft an initial version of Ecophyto 2. Nevertheless, the departments of the ministries were constrained by the financing already committed for Ecophyto 1. It seemed difficult to stop financing the positions and major actions of the first plan (table 4, verbatim 13). They then consulted the stakeholders again.

In terms of policy instruments, the work conducted by the deputy only suggested a marginal modification of the plan. Even though he concluded that the first plan had failed, he proposed to maintain its main instruments while strengthening certain targeted aspects (Potier, 2014 – table 3).

<table><caption>Table 3: Main changes of the Ecophyto plan proposed by the Potier report (Potier, 2014)</caption><thead><tr><th>Main policy proposals in the Potier Report for the revision of Ecophyto plans</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Reinforce the consideration of human health protection aspects: protection of users, local residents, consumers...</td></tr><tr><td>Act at the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) level to ensure that it supports Ecophyto objectives.</td></tr><tr><td>Better take into account sectoral and territorial specificities within the plan</td></tr><tr><td>Reinforce constraints on actors of the value chain others than farmers: implement a proposal coming from an INRA report (Guillou et al., 2013): the Pesticide Saving Certificates (table 1), which initially aimed to financially compel the distributors of pesticides to support alternative solutions.</td></tr><tr><td>Significantly increase the taxation of pesticides.</td></tr></tbody></table>

These proposals highlight two notable evolutions. First, a desire to display greater political voluntarism by mobilizing instruments that are both symbolic and economically structuring (taxation and CAP), and activating binding instruments (Product Savings Certificates). Secondly, the greater consideration given to human health protection aspects shows a desire to broaden the plan, despite the criticisms made that it was already excessively large and weakly prioritized. One can see this as a failure of the management of the policymaking process to
maintain focus on the plans original objective: the redesign of cropping systems was initially seen as the direct technical translation of the 50% reduction objective. In this report, it became one lever among many. Indeed, it emerged from our interviews that several actors, especially certain administrative agents or members of professional agricultural organizations, had analyzed Ecophyto 1 as a failure of the vision of change through the profound redesign of cropping systems. This gave more weight to their vision of a need for an incremental transformation based on risk reduction and improved product use efficiency, without radical change in practices – even though this would not facilitate reaching the policy objective.

Most of the recommendations in the report were taken up by the ministries, except for the most divisive points, the CAP and taxation. They also delayed the objective of reduction to -50% in 2025. These choices, as well as the top-down procedure implemented, prevented relaunching the collective dynamic. Although the actors saluted the work of the deputy and the balance in consulting the various stakeholders, it did not make it possible to draw compatible interpretations of the sources of the failure, nor to identify consensus-generating ways to move forward. Moreover, his report constituted an ambiguous conclusion that satisfied no one. The "alternative" actors were in search of in-depth transformations of the plans, actions on the CAP and relaunch of ambition. The actors of the dominant regime were still opposed to the objective of reduction and put off by the introduction of financial constraints through the Pesticide Saving Certificates.

The attempt to establish Pesticide Saving Certificates also reflected a desire to extend the targets of public action to actors other than farmers and their advisers, in order to establish a broader movement within the sociotechnical system. Nonetheless, by focusing on cooperatives, many actors of the lock-in – e.g. processing industries – were still not taken into account.

## 4.7. Sequence 3 – Implementation of Ecophyto 2 and transition to Ecophyto 2+: breakdown of collective action

The collective dynamic was further weakened by the elimination of several governance bodies, which the administrations considered to be ineffective. This was the case, for example, of the steering committees of each axis of the plan, or of the governance advisory committee, whose purpose was to have Ecophyto expenses collectively approved. This transformation was
experienced as a reduction in transparency by all the participants and a deterioration in the collective work (table 4, verbatim 14 and 15).

In 2019, the government published a new version of the plan, the Ecophyto2+ plan. Administrative management was further extended by integrating the Ministries in charge of health and research, which, for the participants, further burdened the organization of meetings and degraded governance by increasing the number of actors and ministers to coordinate. Little by little, the action of the collective was transformed by the simultaneous reduction of workspaces and the increase in the usage of binding instruments. While Ecophyto meetings were not neglected, they were no longer considered spaces for dialogue. Some agricultural organizations stepped up their action to oppose attempts at coercion. For example, they asked the Council of State, the French supreme court for administrative justice, to cancel the Pesticide Saving Certificates in 2015 (petitions nos. 394696 and 395225 of December 28, 2016 to the Council of State). In an almost symmetrical mechanism, in 2018, NGOs did the same for decisions deemed too unambitious on the creation of non-treatment zones near homes (Council of State, 2019). The importance of bilateral meetings between stakeholders and the administration was reinforced (table 4, verbatim 16a, 16b). After the election of President Macron in 2017, the movement away from Ecophyto working groups was reinforced. President Macron made numerous important decisions, such as the ban on glyphosate (Macron, 2017), and the ban on companies offering both the sale of pesticides and advisory services on plant protection strategies, which constituted an election promise and further undermined the perception of the plan as a coherent strategy by agricultural actors. The advising/sales separations for example complicated the implication of cooperatives in the DEPHY network as well as their understanding and acceptation of the Pesticide Saving Certificates instrument (table 4, verbatim 17).

The Ecophyto2+ plan mainly aimed at integrating those decisions that were not formally included in the Ecophyto processes. More than a place of strategic thinking and planning, "Ecophyto" became a tool for gathering actions taken on pesticides independently, and continued to lose legitimacy.

## 4.8. Epilogue: Blocking and abandonment of collective transition management

The slow degradation of the governance and the legitimacy of the plan led to a situation where collective action was blocked. Even though the Ecophyto plans and the societal dynamics since
548 2007 made it possible for the discussions to progress, and only a few actors were now opposed
to the idea of a need to reduce the use of pesticides, policymakers did not manage to continue
549 to support the construction of compatible interpretations of the situation between participants.
550 On the contrary, the gap between positions had widened. Agricultural organizations sought to
551 build an image of actors driving a "pragmatic" transition (table 4, verbatim 18). However, they
552 were still opposed to a significant reduction objective, in-depth modification of cultivation
553 systems, or the use of binding public action instruments. Environmental NGOs were becoming
554 more radical and tending more and more towards demands for a pure and simple ban on the
555 use of pesticides (table 4, verbatim 19).
556

557 The use of these products had still not reduced significantly compared to the beginning of the
558 plans (fig. 2).

559
<table><thead><tr><th></th><th></th><th>Illustrative verbatim</th><th>Type of actor</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2">1</td><td>a</td><td>"I remember that it was [...] a very positive and very mobilizing way of working that was trying to attract people no matter what. [...] no one had left, no one had slammed the door."</td><td>Representative from an environmental NGO</td></tr><tr><td>b</td><td>"What I found interesting in [...] the Ecophyto plan, which was really innovative in terms of method, was already to work together with all the stakeholders"</td><td>Former employee of an agricultural union</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td></td><td>"To make an action plan to reduce the use of pesticides, [...] there will be a training component, a research component, and a monitoring or experimentation component [...] it's not completely revolutionary either, it's something that comes to mind quite quickly. [...] in all the plans that I know of, [...] there is always a training component and a research component."</td><td>Policy-maker from the Ministry of Agriculture</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td></td><td>"Are we going to be able to get there in ten years, is that enough, shouldn't we act somewhere else? We didn't discuss all that in part 2 [of the Ecophyto R&D report, which proposed a structuring of the DEPHY instrument]."</td><td>Researcher who participated in the writing of the Ecophyto R&D report</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td></td><td>"And we discussed a lot of things, point-by-point where everyone gave their opinion [...], so that interesting things and ideas on what to work on came out of it. [...] there were really only a few things in the end on which we did not agree at all."</td><td>Representative of an environmental NGO</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td></td><td>"At the beginning of Ecophyto [...] I saw the meetings, the rooms full of people to discuss the allocation of funding. So, there was truly a discussion with the stakeholders. In their diversity, which is normal. [...] I spoke a lot at the time with [an environmental NGO] and other actors..."</td><td>Representative of an agricultural union</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td></td><td>"[The objective of agricultural organizations opposed to the 50% reduction objective] is always to try to demonstrate that doing without chemical compounds is not possible today [...] But although it is acceptable at the very beginning of the process, it is less so [after 13 years]"</td><td>Representative of an environmental NGO</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>7</td><td>"The system was absurdly complex. There were a lot of groups that were created as a result for implementing the Ecophyto plan. We were a small team, so we couldn't be everywhere."</td><td>Representative of an environmental NGO</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">8</td><td>a "In fact, that was really the teaching of Ecophyto 1, an operation without any transversality in fact: each component led its own life, and there were meetings of deputy directors once or twice a year to say what they had done in each axis of the plan."</td><td>Policy-maker from the Ministry of the Environment</td></tr><tr><td>b "The whole governance of the Pesticides Saving Certificates is done independently of Ecophyto. [...] It was presented as a separate subject from the plan. And the other examples that I gave, it was a bit similar. "Certiphytos" phytosanitary certificates, for example. [...] Formally, all of this is well integrated into the plan. It's part of the plan, but I had the impression that these instruments could live on their own anyway."</td><td>Policy-maker from the Ministry of Agriculture</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>"The option [taken] was to say: we are going to ask the agricultural world to take charge and get themselves moving. [...] And so it was: finance the chambers of agriculture so that the chambers of agriculture would carry the Ecophyto policy."</td><td>Policy-maker from the Ministry of the Environment</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>"We trained Certiphyto trainers. We trained them to the principle of Integrated Pest Management [...]. [But] we are convinced that we can do 20%, we are not going to tell people we can do 0%. [...] We did not avoid the idea of system change, but we were both highlighting techniques for fundamental economies, up to the possibility of really changing the system and really reducing phyto quantities"</td><td>Employee of a technical institute</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">11</td><td>a "The agricultural profession really had changed its practices in terms of the use of phyto products in recent years. And it did not understand that just that could not affect the NODU. And in terms of the explanations that the Ministry of Agriculture could provide, it was a bit of a disappearing act, because we didn't really have an explanation for the increase of the NODU."</td><td>Employee of an organization representing agricultural businesses</td></tr><tr><td>b The question was "Why does it not work? [...] We could not link this to practices. And then manage to link this to usual cropping systems: what is the molecule used for? If a molecule is highly used, is it because it"</td><td>Policy-maker from the Ministry of Agriculture</td></tr></table>
<table><tr><td></td><td>is absolutely necessary on one crop [...] or it is because it is used a little bit everywhere? We did not explore or systematized this kind of questions"</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>"What must be remembered is that politics takes control of the report, and of the methodology. [...] Should we go see the ladybug manufacturers, or rather a potato field in Pas-de-Calais region [...] there is a political dimension [...] We have not been in the most resistant regions, but instead we have been to see pioneers [...]"</td><td>Policy-maker who took part to the Potier evaluation</td></tr><tr><td>13</td><td>"We were very constrained by the fact that we were structurally financing a number of positions, and that Ecophyto 2 was neither an opportunity nor an excuse to eliminate positions that were financed via the regional chamber of agriculture, for example. Since we would lose the support of the [national assembly of chambers of agriculture] for the plan."</td><td>Policy-maker from the Ministry of Agriculture</td></tr><tr><td>14</td><td>"We no longer had the impression of being involved. We were consulted, of course, we were continually consulted. But there was no longer any impression of working together, of working with the other actors"</td><td>Representative of an environmental NGO</td></tr><tr><td>15</td><td>"We had moved a long way from an enrichment of public policy by the stakeholders. [...]. The absence of discussion meetings also meant that we could drift apart in terms of points of view [...]. So, it was gradually the administration alone that made its choices..."</td><td>Employee of an agricultural union</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">16</td><td>a "Everything happens in bilateral exchange, [...] there is no longer a common space where we can discuss this all together [...] if I compare the part of my position that is to support elected officials on these subjects, before I accompanied them a lot more at collective meetings than at bilateral ones."</td><td>Employee of an organization representing agricultural companies</td></tr><tr><td>b "Today, unfortunately, we are more staring blankly at each other and through judiciary appeals to the Council of State. I have known another time, I regret a little."</td><td>Employee from an organization representing pesticides companies</td></tr><tr><td>17</td><td>"The advising/sales separations is a bit complicated to understand because [...] before [cooperatives] were distributors and could give advices to farmers, so if we are not allowed to give advisory services, while we</td><td>Employee of an organization representing agricultural companies</td></tr></table>
<table><caption>Table 4: Illustrative verbatim from interviewed stakeholders</caption><tr><td></td><td>need to reach our Pesticide Saving Certificates goals, how do we reach those goals? [...] This is complicated and not always well understood by actors on the field. [...] Those who sell phyto products can only give advices on alternative practices [...] and that leads to an odd advice [...] because this is not how a farm works."</td><td>businesses</td></tr><tr><td>18</td><td>"[...] In 2012 our position was the classic position of the agricultural world: we use products which are authorized [...] we felt increasing difficulties at the farmers level [...]. In 2017 we organized a meeting with our network [...] to dare to talk about pesticides. What we felt was a real discomfort of the farmers' side because of the media coverage of the topic, the comments made by their neighbors [...] This led to a big shift in our position: The phyto products are authorized, we use them in conditions that respect the rules, and by being attentive to our environment. Let's look for and identify alternative solutions to change and be fully in the ecological transition."</td><td>Employee of an agricultural union</td></tr><tr><td>19</td><td>"After ten years, we haven't seen the results of the Ecophyto plan, so... [...] the position is no longer -50, it's zero phyto: we have to go toward the complete cessation of using pesticides. [...] the positioning is radicalized completely"</td><td>Representative of an environmental NGO</td></tr></table>
## 5. Findings: What do policymakers need to better manage a policy process to overcome the lock-in around pesticide use?

Reaching a -50% reduction in pesticide use in a few years might be a difficult – maybe impossible goal, but analyzing the Ecophyto plans still allows us to reflect on what policymakers need to improve the management of policy processes to make them better suited to such an ambitious goal and have greater impact. Indeed, the policy processes that we described resulted in plans that were unlikely to transform the French agricultural sector in the short timeframe set in the policy objective. Studies have highlighted that they lacked sufficiently binding or incentivizing instruments and failed to account for the presence of a lock-in (Guichard et al., 2017; Aulagnier, 2020; Dufour et al., 2021). The analysis of Ecophyto's history reveals that this unsuitability of the policy instruments already finds its roots in the policy process itself.

Through the analysis of the narration, it appears that the core components of a "management situation" (participants that have to achieve the result, the presence of an external evaluation, a result and timeframe, the reunions of the participants) were present. The Ministry had created a rather transparent process with indicators to assess whether the collective had reached its goal or not. It was also allowed by the presence of formal evaluating bodies (e.g: The Potier report or the Court of Auditors). Participants were involved in the process, even if it was at different levels and varied with time, and their reunion was, overall, not a problem. These last points degraded towards the end of the situation, along with the deterioration of the governance, but this was more the result of the overall dynamic deterioration than a problematic starting point.

Our results show that the main issues of the policy process rather lay elsewhere: the policymakers struggled to manage three interdependent processes of the management situation (fig. 3-A):

1. The processes of inquiry, which did not allow collective sensemaking and the construction of compatible interpretations of the goal of sustainability ([P1]);

2. The processes of collective instruments definition, which did not take the lock-in into account ([P2]);

3. The implementation processes, fragmented and poorly interconnected, which hampered the
possibilities of mutual adaptation between instruments ([P3]).

596

All these highlight issues in terms of policy capacities, which can be defined as the set of interconnected “skills and resources – or competencies and capabilities – necessary to perform policy functions” and which are needed at the individual, organizational and the system levels (Wu et al., 2015).

601

602

603

<figure><img src="image_10.png" /></figure>

604

<caption>fig. 3: Policy capacities to enhance collective action management for transitions policy processes</caption>

[Left] Diagram 3.A. - describes the blocking elements for each of the pillars of collective action in the Ecophyto processes (P1, P2 and P3) and their interconnections (L).

[Right]: Diagram 3.B. - describes the central pillars of collective action for transitions.

The arrows representing the links (L) in each diagram are numbered to match the numbers of the pillars to which they are connected (e.g.: L3-2 connects pillar P3 to P2).

New policy capacities are needed to allow policymakers to go from the type of policy process characterized by diagram A to diagram B.

614

## 5.1. A need for capacities to manage the inquiry process ([P1])
The inquiry process is a sensemaking process where participants aim at creating compatible interpretations of the situation - i.e. interpretations that may differ but are sufficiently close to allow the participants to work together. In Ecophyto, this namely meant understanding the determinants of pesticide use at the different levels of the lock-in, to identify levers to act on.

Our results show policymakers lacked adequate capacities to enable actors to build compatible interpretations of the situation. In Ecophyto, they supported the inquiry process with two main levers: collective discussions within working groups, with researchers and experts, and experts support through the production of reports. These levers did not allow the creation of compatible interpretations of the situation between participants. Agricultural and environmental actors did not manage to agree on the legitimacy of the policy objective, its feasibility, or the instruments that could be used. Two specific features of the inquiry process explain this:

* The main tool for exploring the implications of the objective set was the technical-economic modeling of the Ecophyto R&D report (Butault et al., 2010), which induced a form of technicization of the debates. More political questions (Under what conditions is it desirable to reduce pesticides? For whom? etc.) were not made sufficiently explicit and debated. The implications of the goal for each type of actor were not detailed.

* The learning opportunities from the different phases of the policy process were inadequately managed (fig. 3-A L3-1; L3-2; L2-3). Action definition and implementation could have brought knowledge to the inquiry process: on participants values or visions, levers and barriers to action within the agri-food system, problems in policy instruments design, etc. These learning opportunities were hindered by the lack of suitable analytical tools. In Ecophyto, the analytical tools for obtaining feedbacks from action mainly took the form of evaluation reports and monitoring indicators. There was no exploration of tools for analyzing the *causes* of the persistence of pesticide use, per crop or per region (see section 4.5.). The differences of interpretation on the developments under way in the agricultural world therefore persisted. In addition, the multiplicity of working groups and the fragmentation of the implementation prevented the collective to have a global overview on Ecophyto and collectively learn from P2 and P3.

All in all, this shows that policymakers did try to facilitate collective sensemaking, but did not mobilize suitable tools or processes to do so. The ministerial organizational routines were not adapted to the needs of the collective sensemaking process, and policymakers lacked capacities to propose alternative routines.
650 In addition, this failure to explore the implications of the goal of sustainability was coupled with an absence of consideration of the lock-in, which limited the collective ability to redefine the problem in the inquiry process. The notion of lock-in was present from the beginning of Ecophyto, namely in the Ecophyto R&D report (Butault et al., Volume VII, p. 38). Nevertheless, the 1st plan favored the “cropping system” concept, relatively isolated from the sociotechnical system into which it was integrated.

657 The failure to consider the lock-in can be explained in several different ways. First of all, it appears that the “forgotten” links of the system were mainly those presenting the strongest political stakes (the CAP) or concentrating the most power (agro-industries). However, it also appears that analyzing the lock-in at the level of the sociotechnical system was not part of the ministries’ organizational routines: those were more focused on changing farmer’s behaviors or supporting the development of new technologies or practices (see verbatim 2). Exploring the lock-in implications would therefore have needed new capacities.

665 Finally, policymakers struggled to manage stakeholder participation in a constructive way. Faced with the difficulties of the 1st plan, the ministries gradually limited the existing spaces for dialogue among actors by turning to a more “top-down” management (see sections 4.6. and 4.7.). To define the actions of the 2nd plan, and because some policymakers considered the collective processes to be ineffective, they favored consultation over co-construction, while seeking to increase the constraint on the agricultural actors, without success. This top-down management did not make the actors’ claims disappear, but rather led them to use other arenas: bilateral discussions with people at high levels within the ministries hierarchies, or recourses to legal authorities such as the Council of State. This resulted in a blockage of the management situation and prevented the sharing and learning that could have facilitated the construction of compatible interpretations and relaunched collective action (fig. 3-A – L2-1 and L3-1).

678 **5.2. A need for co-design capacities to translate the inquiry process into innovative and consistent instruments ([P2])**

681 The definition of actions first collided against the weakness of the inquiry process. The absence of a collective re-problematization of the objective with the lock-in perspective led to proposals
that were relatively disconnected from the objective and from each other. This, in turn, led to a form of layering of ideas rather than a multi-level, multidimensional and consistent policy (fig. 3-A - L1-2):

* The instruments were not really defined according to the expected results. Similar instruments could have been proposed for a policy aiming at lower reduction levels or at a reduction over a longer period of time (see sections 4.3 and 4.6.);

* Some instruments had no direct link with the reduction of pesticides, such as actions aimed at protecting the health of users (see section 4.6.)

* The instruments did not make it possible to mobilize the various reduction levers at different levels of the sociotechnical system. The 1st plan was mainly focused on farmers and their advisers (Martin and Munier-Jolain, 2014; Guichard et al, 2017). The 2nd plan tried to open up the targets of public action but limited itself to integrating cooperatives and trading companies and not the other actors of the sociotechnical system (see sections 4.3. and 4.6. and table 1).

* The instruments were relatively independently imagined and managed (section 4.5 and 4.7), especially during Ecophyto 2+. This led to instruments that lacked consistency and presented opposite logics, such as the advising/sales separations and the Pesticides Saving Certificates.

What the narration shows is that beyond the weaknesses of the inquiry process itself, the policymakers did not have any competencies or resources to translate the understanding of the situation by the group into innovative, multi-level and consistent policy instruments. The instruments were defined through adaptation or recycling of already existing ones – such as the Plant Health Bulletin (see section 4.3.), working groups or reports made by external experts. The framework given for Ecophyto 1 by the Minister of Agriculture was explicitly based on old public action logic. There was no use of specific creativity tools that could help the collective to get out of pre-constructed ideas. Actors engaged in a purposive design process only for the DEPHY network and the Pesticide Saving Certificates, which only represents a small part of the policy.

### 5.3. A need for capacities to design a suitable implementation structure ([P3])

Finally, policymakers were limited by their capacities to design adapted structures for the implementation phase, that would take the lock-in and actors' positions and visions into account. First of all, implementation was delegated, which left to certain actors in charge of delegations
718 the possibility to redirect or attenuate the content of certain instruments (see section 4.5. and
719 the case of the Certiphyto). This is largely due to other organizational routines within the
720 Ministries that lead policymakers to delegate implementation to dominant actors (see verbatim
721 13; Aulagnier, 2020). In Ecophyto, using delegations as an enrollment tool constituted a
722 significant risk because the delegates had divergent objectives (fig. 3-A L1-3) and the
723 administration had few resources to follow them closely (Ansaloni, 2017). Even if the
724 delegations created a link of accountability between the delegates and the ministries (through
725 contractual obligations, decrees, etc.), the evaluation method was not anticipated or designed in
726 a way that could allow the ministries to guide with finesse the action of the delegates towards a
727 contribution to the 50% reduction goal.

728
729 In addition, the policymakers' routine led them to work in a fragmented manner (see verbatim 8- a and b), which in turn meant they designed a compartmentalized implementation structure that
730 resulted in fragmentation of implementation (fig. 3-A L2-3). There were few links between the
731 management groups of the different instruments, preventing any overall perspective (section
732 4.5.). This limited the contribution of the implementation phase to the construction of compatible
733 interpretations of the situation. Indeed, each stakeholder had a good understanding of only one
734 part of the public policy and very few individuals had access to a global vision (fig. 3-A L3-1).
735
736
737

736
737 # 6. Discussion

738
739 The Policy Sciences literature has already described the difficulties encountered by policymakers
740 to develop policy processes ensuring the design of effective instruments matching policy
741 objectives (Cohen et al., 1972; Lascoumes et Le Galès, 2012; Jordan and Turnpenny, 2015;
742 Lascoumes, 2018; Teisman, 2000), and identified several generic policy capacities needed to
743 improve policy design (Wu et al., 2015; George and Reed, 2016; Bali and Ramesh, 2018).
744 Nonetheless, there is still a need for deeper understanding of the specific case of collective
745 sustainability transitions policymaking in the agri-food sector.

746
747 Within the Sustainability Transitions literature, several authors have provided a critical analysis of
748 policy processes (Stegmaier et al., 2014 and 2021; Loorbach and Rotmans, 2010; Loorbach et
749 al., 2015; Hoffmann et al., 2017; etc.), but very few focused on policy capacities (Förster et al.,
750 2021; Borrás et al., 2023). In their literature review on the subject, Borrás et al. (2023) highlight
that most studies focus on system or organizational capacities, rather than on the individual capacities of civil servants. At the organizational level, few studies explore in-depth the capacities for policy formulation, rather, they study policy implementation (Takao 2012; Ryan 2015; Marquardt 2017; Kattel and Mazzucato 2018; Förster et al., 2021), public innovation (Gieske et al. 2016; Grotenbreg and van Buuren, 2018; Meijer 2018) or focus only on analytical or learning capacities (Fiorino, 2001; Oliphant and Howlett, 2010; Elgin and Weible, 2013).

Our analysis allows us to complement this literature by identifying specific capacities needed for managing policymaking processes to overcome a lock-in in the case of pesticide reduction. By studying the operational tools and approaches used by policy-makers, it enabled us to show that the plan's failure was already scripted in Ecophyto's elaboration process itself, and that this can be explained by the fact policymakers lacked various important capacities.

Based on our results, we defined three interconnected pillars for the management of collective policy processes and its adaptation to the characteristics of sustainability transitions in the presence of a lock-in, presented fig. 3-B. These pillars were built to allow for the correction of the shortcomings synthetized in fig. 3-A. Going from situation 3.A. to 3.B. would require several policy capacities that policymakers lacked in the Ecophyto processes. Achieving a situation close to fig.3. B., even with the right capacities, might be an impossible ideal. Building compatible interpretations can sometimes be impossible by lack of time, or because participants' views are too far apart. The literature on policy-making, namely on limited rationality (Muller, 2000; Lascoumes, 2018), has already expressed the probable impossibility to create perfectly optimized public policies. Fig.3.B was therefore built as an ideal goal, to direct progress in the right direction and give recommendations on the policy capacities that States need to develop. We describe here more in-depth what those capacities are and what they entail:

* Capacities for managing an inquiry process allowing the construction of compatible interpretations of the goal of sustainability (fig. 3-B – P1): By using the management situation concept, we show the importance of equipping the creation of compatible interpretations through the process of inquiry. This inquiry must explore the implications of the goal for all actors of the sociotechnical system, and their interactions. Many authors (Geels and Schot, 2007; Loorbach et al., 2015) also emphasizes the importance of creating compatible interpretations. The literature on capacities highlights the need for analytical skills, such as exploring or interpreting an issue (Wu et al., 2015; Pedde, Kok et al., 2019; Borrás et al., 2023).
Nonetheless, to our knowledge, none highlight the simple fact that doing so for public policies that require system-level changes is an extremely complex task, that requires specific capacities. By highlighting the fact that the ministries tried, in Ecophyto, to mobilize science and expertise to support collective sensemaking, our analysis shows that public actors did not fail because they did not try to create compatible interpretations of the goal of sustainability, but because they did not know how to concretely do so, especially considering the important subjective aspect of sensemaking. Beyond the issue of indicators that has already been discussed above, a rich literature exists and suggests tools that could be used as resources for helping policymakers in this area. Turnheim and Nykvist (2019) for instance suggest to re-think the type of knowledge used for modelling-based scenario tools by integrating often overlooked dimensions in the analysis, such as political feasibility or institutional inertia, which could help suggest new framing for expertise reports. Serious games are another well-developed type of tools that could be relevant. Using those tools would then require new competencies for policymakers.

• Capacities for managing the process of collective design of interdependent, multi-level and multidimensional actions (fig. 3-B – P2). The literature on policy capacities shows that co-designing instruments or identifying and selecting them is challenging and requires analytical, political and operational capacities – calling for both skills, knowledge and methodological resources (Mukherjee and Bali, 2018; Blomkamp, 2018). Despite the diversity of the actors mobilized in Ecophyto, their proposals did not make it possible to escape old action logics or to innovate, hereby highlighting an important need for improved co-design capacities. Because of the lock-in, these capacities need to allow policymakers not only to enhance the creativity of the group, but also to create interdependent, multi-level, multidimensional instruments – as part of a coherent, consistent, credible and comprehensive policy mix (Rogge and Reichardt, 2016). The challenge here lies in the need to go back and forth between sub-parts of the policy, while reaping the knowledge provided by the variety of stakeholders involved, as well as ensuring participants understanding and agreement. Moreover, policymakers need to be able to integrate the design of the implementation structure as an integral element of the policy instrument design process (L2-3) (Bali and Ramesh, 2018). In order to enhance innovation and creativity, some scholars, such as Loorbach (2010) for Transition Management, suggest selecting participants for a policymaking process based on their ability to translate a transition vision into concrete actions. Nonetheless, institutionalized policy processes can rarely select participants based on their personal abilities, which calls for a
more fundamental work on providing support to participants through the creation of adequate resources (e.g.: trainings, methods, analytical support...). To help such an ambitious endeavor, several authors developed interesting tools and methods to collectively generate action ideas for sustainability transitions (Matti and de Vincente, 2016; Pluchinotta et al., 2019; Van Rijnsoever and Leendertse, 2020...), which could be usefully adapted to the issues highlighted here.

* Capacities for co-designing a process of implementation adapted to the interdependency of the actions (fig. 3-B - P 3): Our pragmatist perspective allowed us to consider the implementation phase as a constitutive part of the policy process, which echoes the results of the political sociology approach to public policy instruments (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2012; Lascoumes, 2018) as well as the literature on policy mixes (e.g.: Rogge and Reichardt, 2016). We showed that the implementation systems used by the French administration was itself victim of the lock-in: they considered it necessary to delegate instruments to the actors of the dominant regime (agricultural organizations) to ensure greater efficiency. Nevertheless, they did not design the delegations in a way that could limit the ability of those actors to transform the instruments. This could be done by having a more in-depth analysis of which actor would be the most relevant to implement the instrument, or by structuring the accountability system in a way that prevents delegates from transforming the instruments (with, for instance, precise indicators and resources to ensure the successful monitoring of the delegations). In addition, they did not develop an implementation design that ensured interconnections between interdependent actions to facilitate co-evolution and learning. Those elements require both analytical capacities to understand how the structuration of the socio-technical system can influence instruments' implementation, as well as co-design capacities to define the implementation structure and ensure its adaptability. On this matter, inspiration can be found in the work of Baïz (2018), who developed a method to evaluate ex-ante the potential issues that could limit the implementation of an instrument.

* Capacities for ensuring learning between the three pillars of the policy design process: These three pillars are strongly interlinked: the inquiry process must orient actions definition (L1-2) and implementation (L1-3), and those must feed the collective learning process and improve collective sensemaking (L2-1; L3-2; L3-1). Exploring actions definition and implementation possibilities could lead the collective to realize that the original objective is too ambitious or poorly framed, which would lead to its redefinition. It is therefore crucial to develop
853 the different capacities identified in a coordinated way.

854
855 The generic policy capacities that we identified were already mentioned in the literature (sensemaking, co-designing, stakeholder management, etc.) (Wu et al., 2015; Bali and Ramesh, 2018; Mukherjee et Bali, 2018; Borrás, 2023...). Our results specify how those need to be adapted to the characteristics of sustainability transitions in the agri-food sector and the presence of a lock-in, and show the important complementarity amongst all capacities. This highlights the need to enhance research to better understand the operational needs of policymakers to manage transition policy processes. It also suggests avenues for future research-action at the interface between public management, systemic agronomy, sustainability and design sciences, to provide tools, resources and training programs to support policymakers in a concrete manner.

865
866 More broadly, our results strongly suggest a wider problem of dynamic capabilities, within the ministries, to adapt to sustainability transitions. Dynamic capabilities have been conceptualized as "the firm's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competencies to address rapidly changing environments" (Teece, Pisano and Shuen, 1997). It has then been used in the case of public organizations (Borrás et al., 2023). In the case of Ecophyto, we can see that the lack of capacities remained the same through time, even though the public policy was being increasingly criticized. The dynamic capabilities concept suggests on the contrary that, to be efficient, an organization should be able to reinvent itself after a problem has been identified. One hypothesis explaining this lack of dynamic capabilities could be the absence of processes to reflect on the policymaking difficulties and question the ministries' policy capacities. All evaluations were made on the policy instruments themselves. When the philosophy of the policy process was changed to take a "top-down approach", it was rather made by going back to old organizational routines than following an in-depth reflection and renewal of the ministries' capacities. This is consistent with the literature on dynamic capabilities in the public sector, which explains that structuring a routine of internal evaluation and learning is a necessary building block of dynamic capabilities (Fiorino, 2001; Rogge, 2018; Kattel, 2022). This opens the way for further research on how to enhance the States' dynamic capabilities, especially considering that the research on this topic remains small (Loureiro et al., 2021; Kattel, 2022).

885
886 Finally, our result highlight other contributions, which are of a methodological nature. The
combination of the management situation concept with the perspective of sociotechnical system transitions has proved to be particularly fruitful. It has enabled us to identify key pillars needed to manage collective action for transitions policy processes. In addition, while the concept of management situation has been used to study relatively circumscribed environmental issues (Barbier et al., 2020), to our knowledge this is the first article using this concept to study state-level policy processes.

Despite these contributions, our research has some limitations. First, we did not analyze potential local successes hidden by the national statistics or evaluate the contribution of Ecophyto to a long-term transition in the agricultural sector. Nonetheless, since 2017, the use of pesticides has decreased (fig. 2), which might indicate an actual change. Analyst will need to reflect on this when they have more perspective on the stability of this trend. In addition, our analysis is based on a single case study. Its generality will have to be verified by analyzing other policies to validate, amend or enrich the conclusions. It will also be necessary to test the usefulness of our recommendations to the development of agri-food systems transition policies.

## 7. Conclusion

Enhancing policymaking processes to improve the design of transition public policies is a subject of growing interest. This article has sought to contribute to this field of research, starting from the analysis of French pesticide public policies. We analyzed what policymakers would need to improve the management of Ecophyto formulation processes and create suitable plans to overcome the lock-in. The "management situation" concept enabled us to closely analyze the micro-level, operational actions that policymakers take to manage the policymaking process. Through our narrative approach, we were able to follow several attempts at renewing the policy process over time. This allowed us to find an important need for policy capacities adapted to the characteristics of sustainability transitions in the agri-food sector.

More specifically, our results make it possible to identify several sets of interconnected capacities that policymakers lacked in the making of the Ecophyto plans. We highlight the need for capacities to manage three interconnected processes: the process of inquiry, to create compatible interpretations of the goal of sustainability; the processes of collective definition of interdependent, multi-level and multidimensional actions; and their processes of implementation. In our case-study, processes to create compatible interpretations were not
absent, but were ill-adapted to the diversity of actors and their issues. They did not allow the
actors to grasp the importance of taking the lock-in into account. Without compatible
interpretations of the objective and an understanding of the interdependence of the different
parts of the sociotechnical system, actions were defined by layering various proposals, without
making any real link with the objectives to be achieved. The absence of a creative process
forced the collective to repeat old public action logic. The implementation processes, based on
delegations, largely collided with the diversity of actors' visions. The interconnections between
the instruments were too weak to allow mutual readjustments and collective learning. Finally,
the State's attempt to turn to a "top-down" management resulted in a blockage of the
management situation. These results enabled us to highlight that policymakers lacked important
policy capacities, specifically suited to the characteristics of sustainability transitions

Our research points to promising research-action perspectives, which would focus on the
development and experimentation of new concrete methods, tools or resources for supporting
policymakers in the co-design of public policies to overcome a lock-in. By basing such research-
action on the four dimensions that we identified, researchers would have an opportunity to
increase their impact on sustainability transitions by creating deeper links between the fields of
sustainability transitions, systemic agronomy, public management, and design and creativity.
We also believe our results open the way for important research on dynamic capabilities
(Teece, Pisano and Shuen, 1997) for sustainability transitions, to help strengthen the long-term
ability of States to react and adapt to challenges that will only become more and more complex.

942

## Acknowledgements

944

This work was supported by the "Growing and Protecting Crops Differently" French Priority
Research Program, part of the national investment plan operated by the French National
Research Agency (ANR) [grand number: ANR-20-PCPA-0001]; and the French Ministry of
Agriculture. The authors would like to thank Alan Burlot, Samuel Bladwell, Leonard Frank and
Fiona Kinniburgh for their help for the framing as well as the proof reading of the article.

950

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1040 Förster, J.J., Downsborough, L., Biber-Freudenberger, L., Kelboro Mensuro, G., Börner, J., 2021. Exploring criteria for transformative policy capacity in the context of South Africa's biodiversity economy. Policy Sci 54, 209–237. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-020-09385-0

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1070
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1072
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1131 Lamine, C., Barbier, M., Blanc, J., Buurma, J., Scherer-Haynes, I., Lehota, J., Maraccini, E.,

1132 Egon, N., Paratte, R., Szabo, Z., Wierzbicka, A., 2010. Reducing the dependence on pesticides:

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1136 Lascoumes, P., Le Galès, P., 2012. Sociologie de l'action publique (2e édition), Armand Collin.

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1146 Stock from Governance Experimentation. J. Corp. Citizsh. 2015, 48–66.

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1149 Loureiro, R., Ferreira, J.J.M., Simões, J., 2021. Approaches to measuring dynamic capabilities:

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1161 Marquardt, J., 2017. Central-local Relations and Renewable Energy Policy Implementation in a Developing Country. Environmental Policy and Governance 27, 229-243.

1164 https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.1756

1165 Martin, E., Munier-Jolain, N., 2014. Le dispositif Ecophyto est-il suffisant pour réduire l'usage des pesticides ? Agron., Environ. Soc. 4, 11.

1168 Matti, C., de Vicente, J., 2016. Visual toolbox for system innovation. EIT Climate-KIC.

1170 Meijer, A., 2019. Public Innovation Capacity: Developing and Testing a Self-Assessment Survey Instrument. International Journal of Public Administration 42, 617-627.

1173 https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2018.1498102

1174 Meynard, J.-M., Jeuffroy, M.-H., Le Bail, M., Lefèvre, A., Magrini, M.-B., Michon, C., 2017. Designing coupled innovations for the sustainability transition of agri-food systems. Agric. Syst.

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1178 Ministère de l'agriculture et de la pêche, 2008. Plan Ecophyto 2018 de réduction des usages des pesticides.

1181 Ministère de l'agriculture et de la pêche, 2009. Plan Ecophyto 2018 - Fiches actions.

1183 Ministère de l'agriculture, de l'agroalimentaire et de la forêt, 2012. Communiqué de presse – Réduction de l'utilisation des produits phytosanitaires : Stéphane Le Foll ouvre une nouvelle étape.

1187 Ministère de l'agriculture et de la pêche, Ministère de l'écologie, du développement durable et de l'énergie, 2015. Plan Ecophyto 2.

1190 Ministère de l'agriculture et de la souveraineté alimentaire, 2022. Indicateurs des ventes de
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1209 Oliver, T.H., Boyd, E., Balcombe, K., Benton, T.G., Bullock, J.M., Donovan, D., Feola, G., Heard, M., Mace, G.M., Mortimer, S.R., Nunes, R.J., Pywell, R.F., Zaum, D., 2018. Overcoming undesirable resilience in the global food system. Glob. Sustain.

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1227

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1231 Pluchinotta, I., Kazakçi, A.O., Giordano, R., Tsoukiàs, A., 2019. Design Theory for Generating
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1233 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10726-018-09610-5

1234

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1236

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1303

1304 Appendix A

1305

<table><thead><tr><td>Reference</td><td>Document type</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>French Republic, 2006. Interministerial Plan for the Reduction of Risks Related to Pesticides 2006-2009.</td><td>French government action plan on pesticides preceding the Ecophyto plans</td></tr><tr><td>Aubertot, J.-N., Barbier, J.M., Carpentier, A., Gril, J.J., Guichard, L., Lucas, P., Savary, S., Savini, I., Voltz, M., 2005. Pesticides, agriculture and environment. Reducing pesticide use and limiting environmental impacts.</td><td>Expert report from the National Institute for Agronomic Research on pesticides</td></tr><tr><td>Paillotin, G., 2008. Final report of the Chairman of the “Ecophyto 2018” Operational Committee.</td><td>Provisional report of the 1st Ecophyto plan produced by the Paillotin Operational Committee bringing together the various stakeholders</td></tr><tr><td>Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 2008. Ecophyto 2018 plan to reduce pesticide use.</td><td>1st Ecophyto plan (2008-2018)</td></tr><tr><td>Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 2009. Ecophyto Plan 2018 - Action sheets.</td><td>Sheets detailing the actions of the 1st Ecophyto plan, produced by the Agriculture Ministry's administration</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>Butault, J.-P., Dedryver, C.-A., Gary, C., Guichard, L., Jacquet, F., Meynard, J.-M., Nicot, P., Pitrat, M., Reau, R., Sauphanor, B., 2010. Summary of the Ecophyto R&D study report.</td><td>“Ecophyto R&D” report by the National Institute for Agronomic Research on pesticides to shed light on the feasibility of achieving the objective set by the 1st plan</td></tr><tr><td>Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, 2015. Ecophyto 2 Plan.</td><td>Ecophyto 2 Plan (2015-2025)</td></tr><tr><td>Potier, D., 2014. Pesticides and agro-ecology, the fields of possibilities.</td><td>“Potier” report: evaluation report of the 1st Ecophyto plan</td></tr><tr><td>Government of the French Republic, 2018. Action plan on phytopharmaceutical products and agriculture less dependent on pesticides.</td><td>Pesticide use reduction plan drafted in 2018 following a multi-stakeholder conference organized by the State – subsequently integrated into the Ecophyto 2+ plan</td></tr><tr><td>Government of the French Republic, 2019. Ecophyto 2+ Plan.</td><td>Ecophyto 2+ Plan (2019-2025)</td></tr><tr><td>Court of Auditors, 2019. Summary procedure S2019-2659 - The results of the Ecophyto plans.</td><td>Summary evaluation of Ecophyto plans by the French Court of Auditors</td></tr><tr><td>Philippe, E., 2020. Response of the Prime Minister to the summary procedure of the Court of Auditors on the Ecophyto plans.</td><td>Response of the Prime Minister to the summary procedure of the French Court of Auditors on the Ecophyto plans.</td></tr></table>

Appendix A : List of archives on Ecophyto plans analyzed

1306
1307
1308
1309