Axis 3 - Sustainability and governance of social-ecological systems

Axis 3 strongly relies on the notion of ecosystem services as an indicator of sustainability and as a context within which multi-criteria methods can be used to evaluate the sustainability of "business-as-usual" and alternative development pathways. Through this work the BASC consortium seeks to identify and actively encourage processes that involve transformation of technology, society, institutions and governance that lead to sustainable use of natural resources and biodiversity. This axis has a strong focus on the transformative role of agroecological practices at regional scales.

Several lines of investigation will be explored:

• Analyzing the contribution of biodiversity to ecosystem services and the sustainability of SES:
  • analyse the trade-offs and synergies among multiple ecosystem services in contrasted landscapes; explore, through participatory methods, ways in which agroecological management options at field, farm and the landscape scales can result in improvements in a wide range ecosystem services;
  • develop dynamic and spatially explicit models to assess the relationship between biodiversity and the resilience of SES;
• Designing innovative farming systems by reinforcing biodiversity and ecosystem services:
  • work on the complementarity between design assisted by quantitative models and design based on expert knowledge;
  • explore the links between multi-criterion evaluation by computer simulation, experiments, and monitoring / assessment in situ;
  • implement co-design approaches with stakeholders at the scale of farms or landscapes;
• Understanding and transforming institutions, public policy and governance to favour sustainability of SES:
  • assess the main features of multi-level governance in relationship to the transformation to sustainable pathways in agriculture, with a focus on conflict and consensus building as key constituents of the governance process;
  • understand the influence of institutions, public policy and governance on sustainability and contribute to their transformation via scientific assessments and science-policy interfaces; payments for ecosystems services will be studied in this context.

The ambition of BASC is to propose participative approaches that mobilise the full set of models described here as decision support tools and for territorial governance.  In particular, the objectives are to combine modeling and actor's knowledge to construct scenarios that explore a wide range of possible futures.