At the end of this unit, students should be able to: • Understand the relationship between human activities and natural processes, and their impacts on the environment (including policy and management dimensions) • Understand the different dimensions of global change: climate change, invasive species, loss of biodiversity, land use changes... • To critically mobilise the concept of Ecosystem Services (in the current institutional context) to take into account environmental change in rural management and planning policies • Understand and interpret the results, limitations, and potential abuses of scientific assessment in the light of the uncertainties associated with it • Critically understand the science-policy interface in the context of global change (notably IPCC and IPBES)
This course presents the different components of global environmental change, and the role of human activities in relation to it. The EU begins with a historical overview of the conditions of the Holocene, before proposing a definition of the concept of the Anthropocene and a reflection on the contributions and limitations of this concept. The different components of global change are then detailed in relation to the notion of the planet's limits: climate change, disruption of the nitrogen cycle, biodiversity decline, land use change, invasive species. The interactions between these components are also discussed. The concept of Ecosystem Services is introduced as a tool or even an intermediate object to take into account environmental change in the management and development policies of rural areas. Part of this course aims to understand and interpret the results and limitations of scientific assessment in the light of the uncertainties associated with it, in the context of the many science-policy interfaces related to environmental conservation at various scales.
• Participation in courses • Final report and/or presentation on a research question