Description

In 2000, the Scientific Service of the Cevennes National Park expressed its concerns to its scientific committee on the closing of environments and the threat hanging over the majority of heritage issues identified in the Causse Méjan plateau. A propsective study was planned under the research programme Recreating Nature entrusted to M. Etienne, a member of the scientific committee. He suggested setting up a companion modelling approach with all local stakeholders focusing on three questions: How to forecast changes in a natural space of anthropic origin under contrasting strategies of regional development? How to account simultaneously for heritage and productive issues? How to facilitate consultation between stakeholders subject to the same ecological dynamics?

The approach was broken down into four phases:

1. Integrating available scientific knowledge on the states of natural resources, the dynamics of spaces to be protected in priority and the practices of the main local stakeholders (farmers-livestock farmers and foresters) in the form of an agent-based model;
2.  Sharing this representation of the Méjan system with the local stakeholders and incorporating local know-how in the agent-based model;
3.  Situated simulation exercises for stakeholders involved in the Causse Méjan dynamics in a fictitious area yet close to their reality, to make them react to the probable encroachment of pine trees, as part of a role-playing game involving farmers, foresters, park officers and a public policy sponsor (Chamber of Agriculture);
4.  Developing possible management scenarios for the region and collective evaluation of their consequences based on different viewpoints of each category of stakeholder via a new agent-based model.

The approach culminated in collective awareness of the many implications of pine encroachment in the Causse Méjan and setting up a collective action encompassing community of communes, farmers, Chamber of Agriculture, National Park and Forest Agencies, in a local concerted management plan; this led to the introduction of contracts between 28 farmers, the Park and certain owners of forest.

Following this project, the Cevennes National Park decided to extend the same approach to the Causse du Sauveterre, and the Larzac livestock farmers wished to adapt the approach to reflect on the valuation of their pine and oak stands (SCTL case study).

For further information:  an engineer's dissertation on the model (Cohen, 2001), an article on the model and the scenarios (Etienne et al ., 2003), an article on the approach and the role-playig game (Etienne and Le Page, 2007), a book chapter in french on the approach (Etienne, 2009).