A bio-economic analysis for land-uses and biodiversity in metropolitan France

Dealing with the erosion of terrestrial biodiversity has become of key importance in order to ensure ecosystems sustainability. Agricultural and forestry activities are one major anthropogenic driver of this decline. The underlying land-use changes result in the alteration of species habitats. Current agricultural and forestry public policies exhibit drawbacks in terms of biodiversity conservation. Reconciling economic and ecological objectives of such public policies thus remains an ongoing critical challenge. In that respect, this paper presents the impacts of contrasted public policy scenarios within a dynamic and spatialized bio-economic framework applied to metropolitan France. We assessed ecological performances through 5 indicators accounting for various structural and functional components of the biodiversity while economic performances refer to land-use incomes. We demonstrate that long-term synergies between ecological and economic performances can emerge, especially within extensive-farming scenarios. Our results underline the necessary adaptation of land-use public policies by taking into account the biodiversity component being supported. We advocate the use of biodiversity indicators into the public decision-making process.