Development of the Citizens’ Earth

This memo presents in a summarized way the history of the development of the Citizens’ Earth - APM Network and its situation in May 2006.

The global APM Citizens’ Earth Network was created gradually from 1993. This global dynamics saw the day within the APM program (Family farming, Societies and Globalization) that the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation for the Progress of Humankind (FPH) supported and facilitated from 1989 to 2002. Centered on the future of the world’s agricultural population and food, this program saw the gradual constitution of regional and continental networks associating farmers, fishworkers, members of NGOs, and researchers. The occasion of the first world meeting of these networks, in 1993, the launching of international workshops around common themes (food, agriculture, fishing, natural-resource management, etc.) revealed the existence of a global dynamics going beyond the regional identities of the networks, the farmers’ organizations, and the associated NGOs: the global APM Network was born. Organized on the basis of relations of mutual trust, this network went gradually from a capacity to produce collective intelligence to that of drawing up and promoting proposals at the international level and being at the initiative of events at the international level. The reduction of the support from the Foundation, on the occasion of its period of assessment and considerations in 2002-2003, brought the facilitators to undertake some overall thinking. The years 2004 and 2005 proved that, while operating informally, the network remained an arena favorable to the initiatives of its members, able to become enhanced by the collective experience and to associate the whole or part of the network. A meeting of facilitators of this network is to take place in June 2006 in France. It must make it possible to reinforce the synergy of the initiatives promoted by each of its members, to develop a common working Web site, to rely on the constitution of several resource Web sites implemented by several alliances or organizations (AGTER, APMM, CERAI, CEFODIR), and to produce and to share useful knowledge for common action.