Reading Ecosystem Services at the Local Scale through a Territorial Approach: the Case of Peri-Urban Agriculture in the Thau Lagoon, Southern France

Abstract

ABSTRACT. In recent years, the ecosystem services (ES) concept has become a major paradigm for natural resource management. While policy-makers demand "hard" monetary evidence that nature conservation would be worth investing in, ongoing attempts are being made to formalize the concept as a scientifically robust "one size fits all" analytical framework. These attempts have highlighted several major limitations of the ES concept. First, to date, the concept has paid little attention to the role of humans in the production of ES. Second, the ongoing formalization of the ES concept is turning it into a "technology of globalization," thereby increasingly ignoring the socio-cultural context and history within which ecosystems emerge. Third, economic valuation has been shown to limit local stakeholders in expressing their daily and immediate ways of interacting with their environment over and beyond extrinsic motivation provided by financial gains. We address these three limitations by analyzing a social evaluation of the roles of peri-urban farmland from a territorial perspective. Our case study is the Thau lagoon in southern France. We conducted in-depth interviews with a broad range of stakeholders and ran two participatory workshops. Using a territorial meta-model that distinguishes three levelsphysical, logical, and existential-stakeholder data were analyzed to unravel the interplay of territorial elements at these three levels that gives rise to ES in two broad categories: food production and aesthetic landscape. The coupling of ES and territory concepts opens up several novel analytical perspectives. It allows partitioning of ES in a manner that "re-contextualizes" them and gives insight about both their physical constituents and their meaning at the territorial level. Additional research should incorporate the dynamics of service demand and supply, and further investigate options for implementation.

Ecosystem services, social interdependencies, and collective action: a conceptual framework

“…Some have stressed the role of societies in the coproduction of ES (Rives et al 2012, Spangenberg et al 2014, Bennett et al 2015, Lescourret et al 2015, Ruoso et al 2015 or the relationship between ES and well-being (Coulthard et al 2011, Daw et al 2011, Summers et al 2012. Others have pushed toward the integration of a diversity of value systems in ES valuation, to go beyond economic and monetary valuations based on utilitarian rationalities , Dendoncker et al 2014, Martín-López et al 2014, Raymond et al 2014, or toward an understanding of the diversity of metaphors framing people's relation to nature, acknowledging that the ES concept is just one metaphor among others (Flint et al 2013, Raymond et al 2013, Díaz et al 2015, Silvertown 2015.…”

The Role of Urban Agriculture as a Nature-Based Solution: A Review for Developing a Systemic Assessment Framework

“…The focus of the studies dealing with ecosystem services and biodiversity is clearly on community gardens (14 papers, e.g., [60,61,72], followed by private/home food gardens (6 papers, e.g., [73][74][75] and allotment gardens (5 papers, e.g., [60,68,76]). Urban and peri-urban farms [75,77] or rooftop gardens [78] are rarely investigated within this challenge.…”

“…In this category, a "lack of community support" (n = 38%) is the most striking constraint for the implementation of UPA. This constraint includes a lack of citizens' motivation [43], negative perceptions of UPA forms [77], lack of trust [82], or even vandalism [160]. "Constraining food consumption patterns" (3%), such as the consumption of food products from globalized industrial agriculture, e.g., [117], do not play a highly restricting role for UPA implementation in the review.…”

“…Ecological threats are of major concern in the review (n = 33). "Threats to soil through UPA activities", including, for instance soil contamination through pesticide and chemical fertilizer use e.g., [77], are most often cited in this impact category (42%). In contrast, "high electricity demand related to UPA", for example for increased lighting of plants [152], was mentioned only twice in the whole review.…”

A cultural approach to wetlands restoration to assess its public acceptance

“…However, although ER is usually based on expert judgment, decisions regarding what must be restored are based on the perception of “what was there” or “what should have been there” (Hobbs ). Moreover, avoiding the local perception often provides a decontextualized vision of the goals of the project (Ruoso et al ) that ignores the cultural and historical context of the natural area (Vos & Meekes ). The consequence might be an insufficient public acceptance of the changes in landscape and functions during and after restoration processes (Decker et al ).…”