Émergence de la notion de service environnemental dans les politiques agricoles en France : l’ébauche d’un changement de paradigme?

Abstract

This article deals with the transfer of environmental service’s concept in agricultural policies in France. It is based on a document and literature review and on semi-directive interviews conducted from September 2009 to April 2010 with 62 key stakeholders in the French agriculture sector.The notion of environmental services and ecosystem services has been gathering strength since the 1970s and has been popularized with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005. Yet the concepts appeared late in France. Until 2003 France was arguing for the idea of multifunctionality in agriculture. The concept came on the national political scene from 2005. At the same time the idea was spreading in the farming world that agriculture renders environmental services. Agricultural circles are concerned with environmental services rather than ecosystem services, and the idea gathered steam in 2008 and 2009 with publications and symposiums on the subject by the agriculture ministry. Although there is no explicit reference to environmental services or payments for environmental services (PES) in French laws and regulations governing agricultural provisions, the ES concept was introduced in legal renditions of the commitments made under the French Grenelle environment agreement and they feature prominently in the discussions towards the CAP reform in 2013. The growing prevalence of the PES idea in French and European debates on agriculture (CAP-2013) seems to herald a renewal of agri-environmental provisions in France.

Keywords

• environmental service
• agricultural policy
• agri-environment schemes