Bio economic modeling for a sustainable management of biodiversity and agriculture

Abstract type : Short presentation
Submitted by : Lauriane Mouysset
Authors and Speakers : Mouysset Lauriane

Information about other authors :

L. MOUYSSET¹, L. Doyen¹, F. Jiguet¹, G. Allaire², F. Léger³

1. CERSP (UMR 7204), MNHN-CNRS, 55 rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France
2. ESR (US 685), INRA, Chemin de Borde Rouge BP 52627 Castanet Tolosan cedex, France
3. SAD-APT, INRA 16 rue Claude Bernard, 75231 Paris Cedex 05

Hot topics that are addressed (1 and 5)

1.      Innovating to link production and conservation: how to feed the world population and protect the planet at the same time?

2.      Renewing research models and practices: how can research better fulfil its responsibilities to elaborate innovating solutions in collaboration with society?

In our study we developed a bioeconomic model which conciliates ecological and economic objectives. The main goal is to analyze the bio-economic co-viability of French agriculture.

We elaborated different scenarios of public policy which had to be realistic in politic and social viewpoints. We can test economic and ecological contrasted scenarios and innovating policies which move new techniques. This approach can be an aid to decision making and encourages the collaboration between society and researchers.

Objective of the paper

For several decades strong declines in common bird populations in Europe have been recorded. Literature shows that agriculture, and more specifically agricultural intensification, are the main drivers of this decrease. These implications lead to greater concerns on the environmental impact of agriculture. Its current evolution aims at a more sustainable way of producing, which would reconcile its functions of production and conservation. Our objective was to study the impact of public policies and land uses on both conservation and production in agricultural areas. More precisely we focused on the impacts of permanent and temporary grasslands and arable lands on biodiversity. We tried to characterize the key stages on the elaboration of a sustainable policy.

Originality and main contribution

The fundamental difficulty of agricultural policies is the multi-functionality of agriculture. The main contribution of our study is to develop an interdisciplinary approach crossing ecological, economic and politic dimensions. This integrated analyze of the French agriculture asked by the decision makers is necessary to elaborate sustainable policies. Moreover our model is developed in a large scale and thus allows a global view of the territory and impacts of public policies. The originality of our work is the dynamic modeling which integrates adaptive responses of farmers to the economic and politic environment and birds to the land uses. 

Methods

We developed a macro-regional model, which combines a community dynamics of 65 bird species and an economic decision model for the representative agent of each French region. The ecological model is based on the STOC (Time Survey of Common Birds) database of the French National Museum and Beverton-Holt dynamics. The economic model is calibrated with the gross margin of the RICA (Network of Agricultural Accountant Information). To analyze the ecological and economical spheres, the decision maker could use several indicators. We developed different scenarios based on subsidies and taxes to study the impact of public policies on biodiversity and agricultural economic: in some scenarios, stakeholders could play on one agricultural practice, in others acting on two uses they could combine effects.

Results

We showed that simple economic instruments could be used to establish scenarios which lead to a growth of economic performance and an increase in bird populations. The comparison between scenarios showed synergies between land uses. We can explore these synergies to elaborate more efficient politic scenarios. However the sustainability of the different policies depends on the ecological and economic indicators which the decision makers use to analyze the health of their system. Like the ecological and economic objectives, the budget and the speed, the choice of indicators seems to be a main key stage of the construction of optimal policies. The bio-economical analysis showed that there was no unique Pareto optimum for the ecology-economy trade-off. These results suggest that many possibilities are available to develop sustainable agricultural scenarios.

Keywords :
Common birds, Agriculture, Bio-economic modeling, Public policies, Scenarios