Abstract
This project aims to bring answers regarding the territory’s capacity for adaptation and the reduction of its vulnerability to climate change. It is based on a specific territory, the Scarpe-Escault Regional Nature Park. The notion of ecosystem services is used as potential medium for the link between climate change and territory. The aim is to analyse how taking biodiversity into account in public decision-making is a factor for the modification of public action in the area of governance and choices for local development and planning. Some territory projects will be analysed to identify their weaknesses and strengths, as well as the dependencies existing between the project and the territory’s ecosystems, whether they turn out to be implementation assets or constraints to look into the relevance of the ecosystem services approach to include biodiversity issues in public decision-making thanks to the light thrown by the analysis of ecosystem services; the project will also report on the quality and content of participative debates around the idea of measuring the value of including ecosystem services in territorial coordination, decision support and democratic and participative practices. The identification of high stake ecosystem services and of their current, likely and desirable evolution in a climate change context will lead to reflect on types of biodiversity management and socioeconomic uses for ecosystems. The idea will be to draw out some principles for improving biodiversity management and socioeconomic uses, in view of the elements gathered during the participative phases and in view of the potentials and threats drawn out from the evolution of ecosystem services analysis. In total, the results will take part in the fight against climate change by delivering evaluation methods opened up to ecosystem services, by deepening the analysis and method for defining the territories’ socioeconomic vulnerability to climate change, by suggesting possible improvements in the way that the climate issue is dealt with in a local development and adaptation context (adaptive management approach for territories).
France