Fanny Boeraeve

Spatial diversification of agroecosystems to enhance biological control and other regulating services: An agroecological perspective

Spatial diversification of crop and non-crop habitats in farming systems is promising for enhancing natural regulation of insect pests. Nevertheless, results from recent syntheses show variable effects. One explanation is that the abundance and diversity of pests and natural enemies are affected by the composition, design and management of crop and non-crop habitats. Moreover, interactions between both local and landscape elements and practices carried out at different spatial scales may affect the regulation of insect pests. Hence, research is being conducted to understand these interdependencies. However, insects are not the only pests and pests are not the only elements to regulate in agroecosystems. Broadening the scope could allow addressing multiple issues simultaneously, but also solving them together by enhancing synergies. Indeed, spatial diversification of crop and non-crop habitats can allow addressing the issues of weeds and pathogens, along with being beneficial to several other regulating services like pollination, soil conservation and nutrient cycling. Although calls rise to develop multifunctional landscapes that optimize the delivery of multiple ecosystem services, it still represents a scientific challenge today. Enhancing interdisciplinarity in research institutions and building interrelations between scientists and stakeholders may help reach this goal. Despite obstacles, positive results from research based on such innovative approaches are encouraging for engaging science in this path. Hence, the aim of the present paper is to offer an update on these issues by exploring the most recent findings and discussing these results to highlight needs for future research.

Participatory identification and selection of ecosystem services: building on field experiences

The concept of ecosystem services (ESs) has become a popular tool for science that aims to support decision making for sustainable management of natural resources. With the aim to integrate nature’s diverse values in decisions and to reach effective actions, it is recommended that valuations begin with a participatory identification of the most relevant ESs to be included in the assessment. Despite being a crucial step directly influencing decision making, experiences of researchers with real-life applications are seldom reported. Our aim is to advance the organization and implementation of participatory ES identification and selection by providing a self-reflective description and discussion of 5 case studies (CSs). A self-evaluation workshop was organized among the researchers involved in the CSs to gather factors of success and failure encountered throughout the process. From this reflection, we suggest a list of 11 recommendations. We use a wide range of the literature on participatory research evaluation to guide our reflection and demonstrate the relevance of participatory science to the field of ESs. Reflexivity proved to be an essential aspect of sharing lessons learned and advancing methodology toward real-life impact.

How can integrated valuation of ecosystem services help understanding and steering agroecological transitions

Agroecology has been proposed as a promising concept to foster the resilience and sustainability of agroecosystems and rural territories. Agroecological practices are based on optimizing ecosystem services (ES) at the landscape, farm, and parcel scales. Recent progress in research on designing agroecological transitions highlights the necessity for coconstructed processes that draw on various sources of knowledge based on shared concepts. But despite the sense of urgency linked to agroecological transitions, feedbacks from real-world implementation remain patchy. The ability of integrated and participatory ES assessments to support this transition remains largely underexplored, although their potential to enhance learning processes and to build a shared territorial perspective is widely recognized. The overarching question that will be asked in this paper is thus: what is the potential of the ES framework to support the understanding and steering of agroecological transitions ? We argue that conducting collaborative and integrated assessments of ES bundles can increase our understanding of the ecological and social drivers that support a transition toward agroecological systems, and help design agroecological systems based on ES delivery and effectively accompany transition management based on shared knowledge, codesigned future objectives, and actual on-the-ground implementation. In this paper, we discuss this question and propose a four-step integrated ES assessment framework specifically targeted at understanding and steering agricultural transitions that is generic enough to be applied in different contexts.