July 2022 | INRAE-Cirad-Ifremer-IRD
At the initiative of the Ethics in Common committee
Self-referral approved on 25 September 2023

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This Guidance was approved at a meeting of the Ethics in Common Committee on 25 September 2023. It follows a request received on the Committee's website at the end of September 2022. The Committee deemed the question worthy of consideration.
In its current form, this Guidance is the product of contact with staff from the four organisations, contributions from a number of teams, a collective discussion session in Nantes with local research teams, and exchanges with the presidents of the organisations. Discussions were also held with COMETS, the CNRS ethics committee, which has just published two Guidances on environmental issues (n°2023-43; n°2023-45).
The members of the Committee do not claim to bring the debate to a close on a question of such importance. This Guidance is simply a progress report on the current state of their line of thinking in the context of rapidly evolving environmental issues. The Committee calls on all those who read it to share their comments or thoughts, so that it can clarify or supplement the current text in the coming months.

_{Illustration: Parched soil | Credit: INRAE}