(This is a joint seminar with Luc Doyen)
Agriculture has been identified as a major driver of the current significant changes in farmland biodiversity. Taking into account these environmental impacts, agriculture today aims at a more sustainable way of producing that would reconcile its economic and ecological functions. A new approach based on bio-economic modelling has been recently developed to explore different facets of such reconciliation and understand how to promote sustainable agricultural public policies. In this paper, we review the contributions of such approach. The review shows that it is possible to reconcile agriculture and biodiversity with public policies, in the way of it is possible to increase simultaneously the economic and ecological performances of agricultural landscapes compared to the current trends. However, it is not possible to optimize this reconciliation: the different criteria cannot be maximized simultaneously, and some trade-offs emerge between economic and ecological criteria in optimality. To go further, some bio-economic studies open new perspectives. For example, they suggest studying the society as a whole instead of focussing on the agricultural sector, or to go beyond the concept of optimality by stressing the idea of viability. In addition to reforming the current agricultural policies, deeper debates about the notion of sustainability have to be held.
About the speaker: Lauriane Mouysset has received a double education in ecology and in environmental economics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris. After her PhD in Ecology at the French National Museum of Paris and her post-doc in Economy at the University of Cambridge, she currently holds a permanent position as Junior Scientist (Chargée de Recherche) at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) within the research unit GREThA (Research Group Theoretical and Applied Economics) at the university of Bordeaux. Following an inter-disciplinary perspective, her major research topics includes the ecological economics, bio-economics modelling, viable management of biodiversity and land-uses, and sustainable public policy. More precisely, her work uses quantitative methods based on theoretical and calibrated to assess the bio-economic consequences of public policy scenarios and their sustainability. She published a book “Repenser le défi de la biodiversité: l’économie écologique” (Les Editions de la Rue d’Ulm, Collection Sciences Durables, 2015) and more than 10 publications in international peer-reviewed journals, of which four have been highlighted by the DG Environment News Alert Service of the European Commission “Science for Environment Policy”. She has been a main contributor of several research projects such as the ANR Systerra FarmBird, the FRB SCNENARIO BIODIVERSITE project MOBILIS, and currently contributes to the Network ANR project Resus, the ANR project ACroSS, the research project LaBex COTE project Navire and the Belmont Forum network project Seaview.
How to participate in this seminar:
1. Book your nearest ACE facility;
2. Notify Vera Roshchina at RMIT (rmitopt@rmit.edu.au) to notify you will be participating.
No access to an ACE facility? Contact Maaike Wienk to arrange a temporary Visimeet licence for remote access (limited number of licences available – first come first serve)