Climate change and terroir: The challenge of adapting geographical indications

• Author: William A. Kerr,Lisa F. Clark
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jwip.12078
• Date: 01 July 2017
• Published date: 01 July 2017

DOI: 10.1111/jwip.12078

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Climate change and terroir: The challenge of

adapting geographical indications

Lisa F. Clark

1

|

William A. Kerr

2

1

Department of Agricultural and Resource

Economics, University of Saskatchewan,

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

2

University Distinguished Professor,

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon,

Saskatchewan, Canada

Correspondence

William A. Kerr, Department of Agricultural

and Resource Economics, University of

Saskatchewan, 51 Campus Dr Saskatoon,

SK, S7K 4N5, Canada.

Email: william.kerr@usask.ca

The concept of terroir is often included in legal descriptions

of Geographical Indicators (GIs). GIs are intellectual property

that recognizes a food, beverage, or artisan product as

holding distinct properties based on geographic origin. GIs

are used to indicate these distinctions while deterring the

sale of products carrying similar labels without having the GI

determined qualities. Climate change and its effects on

aspects of terroir such as rainfall, water availability, soil

quality, and temperature is already having an effect on some

production aspects crucial to what brings distinctiveness to

GI products based on terroir. These factors raise questions as

to how conceptions of terroir and the formalized rules

underpinning the distinctiveness of GIs are evolving in the

face of climatological changes. This paper discusses how

climate change may influence how terroir is encoded in

legally recognized GIs and how this will influence interna-

tional regulation, recognition, and trade flows in

GI-protected food and beverages. It discusses the relation-

ship between GIs, credence attributes and the legal

recognition of terroir. It then explores three options for

products with GIs based on terroir that are experiencing

climate change: product quality change, definitional change,

or re-interpreting the boundaries of terroir relevant to the GI

distinction.

KEYWORDS

climate change, geographical indications, intellectual property,

terroir

© 2017 The Authors. The Journal of World Intellectual Property © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jwip J World Intellect Prop. 2017;20:88–102.