Analysing pastoral livestock farming through its multifunctionality and associated ecosystem services to strengthen public action

However, pastoralism currently undergoes considerable pressure, raising the question of its future forms and relationships with other activities in the region, particularly in the context of territorial restructuring (shift towards a residential and tourist economy, forest expansion, climate change, etc.).

Objectives

The Pastofutur project aims to produce an interdisciplinary framework around the concepts of ecosystem services associated with pastoral areas and of multifunctionality of the pastoral activity. Through these conceptual lenses, the project will provide actionable knowledge around pastoral activities, with the objective to strengthen societal contributions in defining the future of this activity.
In the form of an action research project, it will study the ability to express synergies and trade-offs between the functions expected of livestock farming by linking them to the functioning of ecosystems and the services they produce. It will identify the ways in which the notion of ecosystem service is perceived and appropriated by stakeholders, and how it can constitute a boundary object facilitating the convergence of public actions.

Pastofutur aims to co-produce, with a diversity of stakeholders, a set of methods to support the redefinition of the role of pastoral activity in the future of the areas concerned. It will explore how knowledge on ecosystem services can be mobilised to support the adaptive capacity of the pastoral activity and its contribution to sustainable territorial development.

Ressources

This project will be based firstly on an analysis of pastoral livestock farming activities from the point of view of their multifunctionality, i.e. considering its multiple contributions to the economic, social and environmental dynamics of rural areas. Secondly, the project will analyse the bundles of ecosystem services associated to agropastoral areas in terms of co-production processes and of synergies and trade-offs between their beneficiaries on a territorial scale.

To facilitate the expression of points of view on the various functions of livestock farming and on its contribution to the sustainable development of the region, the project will use the audiovisual mediation medium “Grazy!”.
A conceptual model of multifunctionality and an associated simulation model will be adapted and parameterised on the basis of a characterisation of the ecosystem services associated with pastoral activity in the French situation.

A case study will be carried out on the territory of the Alpes-Provence-Verdon community of municipalities.

INRAE units involved

• LESSEM  Research Unit - Mountain Ecosystems and Societies Laboratory
• MoISA Joint Research Unit - Montpellier Interdisciplinary center on Sustainable Agri-food systems 
• SELMET Joint Research Unit - Mediterranean and Tropical Livestock Systems

External partnership

• SENS Joint Research Unit CIRAD-Knowledge, Environment and Societies