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The guide aims to help practitioners understand local context and external pressures – the formal and informal institutional, political, legal, economic and social setting of conservation – to guide action for better ecosystem management.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – the most comprehensive assessment to date of the status and trends of Earth’s ecological systems – warned us that 60% of the benefits nature provides to people (‘ecosystem services’) are being degraded or used unsustainably. This triggered widespread efforts, by research groups, conservation organizations and think tanks, to design and use ecosystem services assessments and tools around the world. These efforts aim to integrate the ‘value of nature’ in decision-making, policies, business operations and ultimately to change society’s development trajectory to be sustainable.Yet, recent studies point out that not all new tools and scientific knowledge on ecosystem services are effectively used as a basis for decision and action leading to positive social and environmental outcomes. To create change, new scientific and expert knowledge, even when worrying, robust and empirically grounded, is not enough. It needs to be mobilized by leaders and change agents – researchers, conservation NGO practitioners, motivated policy makers or business – who use the information systems and knowledge as part of a strategy of communication, advocacy and action.Context matters. A good understanding of the context for biodiversity and ecosystem services approaches often determines whether a project has impact or not. Such understanding can be gathered quickly and easily using ‘context diagnostic1’ tools. These can be used by practitioners who are agents of change in real world situations.This report introduces such a context diagnostic tool for conservation and Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Assessment and Valuation (BESAV) practitioners. The tool includes five approaches based on well-established social science theories. Each approach gives a contrasting perspective and raises a set of thought-provoking questions on social, organizational, institutional and political aspects of context. The tool is illustrated throughout by examples inspired by real- world case studies, gathered through interviews and participatory workshops. The tool can be used at different stages of BESAV projects (scoping, implementation, evaluation and debriefing).We have grounded this context diagnostic method on well-established social science theory to build on their rich insights and empirical studies. The five theories were chosen for their relevance to the management of ecosystems:• institutionalizing treatment of new environmental issues• strategic analysis and strategy development• knowledge and innovation as a lever of change• the mobilization and articulation of multiple values•the well-being of local communities who use the natural environment and the role of institutions and rules in enabling them to do soThese theoretical frameworks can enrich the way practitioners reflect on and understand the dynamics of change that they are part of.

International audience; Reducing firms’environmental impact is a question now widely addressed in the management and sustainable development literature. Increasingly, new frameworks and tools are introduced to help business better measure and reduce their impacts on biodiversity and ecologicalsystems. Yet, the specific issues faced by environmental sector companies that try to develop commercial services dedicated to the management of ecosystems are today still largely unexplored. For them, the core issue regarding sustainable business model innovation is not so much the one of ‘greening’ their supply chains, but rather of imagining, designing and proposing original services and business models for the creation of ecological value.In this paper, we distance ourselves from existing propositions to use economic valuation and standard monetary pricing of biodiversity and ecosystem services (the benefits humans receive from good ecosystem functioning) as a basis and precondition for thedevelopment of new biodiversity markets and business models. Instead, we suggest that “ecological value”, defined in most general terms as the improvement of ecological systems’ quality (i.e. higher biodiversity richness, better freshwater quality, improved ecosystem functioning, etc.), is always co-defined and co-created by multiple stakeholders in a given ecological, organizational and political context. Therefore, we call “conservation-oriented business models” negotiation models for firms who engage inthe co-definition and co-creation of ecological value in various contexts, by proposing legitimate and valuable commercial contributions to the collective management of ecosystems.This paper is based on a three years long action-research conducted at the heart of a leading French water company. The firm’s core business model is based on long-term contracts with municipalities for the provision of water services. The profitability of this core business model is continuously eroding since the beginning of the 2000s, due to higher competition on prices45and the rise of ecological threats on the quality and availability of water resources that require new investments. To diversify its portfolio of activities, the company has adopted in 2009 an explicit strategy of developing new commercial services and innovations to improve the collective management of freshwater quality (freshwater quality monitoring, voluntary plans to reduce agricultural pollutions etc.), and more largely, to contribute to the restoration of the landscape’s ecological quality (ecological restoration, biodiversity offsetting, artificial wetlands, adaptation to climate change, etc.).The paper first describes how managers experimentdifferent practical paths to develop new business models supporting the development of such services in various commercial and ecological settings in France. We show the diversity of challenges and obstacles that they encounter such as: issues of legitimacy and license to operate as they try to establish relationships with new stakeholders and clients in the domain of environmental management; issues of quantification of the ecological value generated by their new services, etc.The paper then describes how we used theoretical frameworks adapted to the collective management of ecological issues, as well as action-research methods such as focus groups, scenario building and simulation games to design four original conservation-oriented business models dedicated to ecological value co-creation. We show how each model responds to very different possible contexts where public funding and public initiative for ecological restoration is rather high or low. We describe how, in each of thefour models, the company can develop different “services for ecosystems” value propositions that combine ecological engineering services, ecosystem assessments and accounting services, and organizational activities.The paper then discusses how in each of the four models, the company needs: (1) to negotiate its value proposition with different types of clients; (2) to organize various relationships with different communities of stakeholders/partners in order to co-create long-term ecological values; (3) to play different roles, on the basis of different moral values, in order to be accepted as a legitimate player in ecological systems management and justify the remuneration and profitability of its contributions; (4) to develop ecological accounting modelsand tools in order to quantify, monitor and support the negotiation and management of the ecological value co-creation processes

Current efforts to halt the destruction of the planet’s ecosystems and to reinforce and renew their collective management reside on three distinct innovation fronts: (1) the design and use of new ecosystem assessment tools by conservation scientists and practitioners; (2) the development of new social and environmental accounting frameworks and tools at the level of organization; (3) the contribution of the private sector to natural capital protection and maintenance. This doctoral thesis aims to relate these three domains of innovation to one another by mobilizing the accounting discipline as a pivot to connect ecological information systems and tools, diverse forms of collective action for ecosystem management, and private sector initiatives and accounting innovations. The thesis combines a work of theoretical construction with the results of an action-research conducted in an environmental sector company that seeks to develop new services specifically designed for the management of ecological systems. We first propose a new theoretical and practical perspective at the junction of accounting and conservation science centered on the collective management of ecological issues: the development of Management Accounting for Ecosystems. We show why and how they are complementary to all the other domains of ecosystem accounting innovation. Secondly, we introduce four organizational and strategic directions to think and guide the development of new “services to ecosystems” business models. To complement them, we suggest new accounts and accounting practices to help environmental sector companies negotiate and co-create ecological value with other stakeholders, and transform their own representation and quantification of corporate value.; La lutte contre la destruction des écosystèmes et les efforts pour renforcer et renouveler les conditions de leur prise en charge collective reposent aujourd’hui sur trois fronts d’innovation disjoints : (1) la conception et l’utilisation de nouveaux outils d’évaluation des écosystèmes dans le champ de la conservation ; (2) le développement de nouvelles comptabilités socio-environnementales à l’échelle des organisations et (3) la mise à contribution des entreprises dans la protection du capital naturel. Cette thèse doctorale vise à les articuler en mobilisant la comptabilité comme pivot pour connecter les systèmes d’information écologique, les formes diverses d’organisation de l’action collective, et les initiatives et comptabilités des entreprises. Elle combine un travail de construction théorique et une recherche-intervention auprès d’une grande entreprise du secteur de l’environnement qui cherche à développer des activités de service dédiées à la qualité écologique des territoires. Nous proposons premièrement l’ouverture d’une nouvelle perspective d’innovation théorique et pratique, au croisement entre comptabilités et sciences de la conservation, et centrée sur la gestion collective de problèmes écologiques : le développement de « Comptabilités de Gestion pour les Ecosystèmes ». Nous montrons en quoi elles sont complémentaires de l’ensemble des autres types d’innovations comptables portant sur les écosystèmes. Nous proposons deuxièmement quatre grandes orientations organisationnelles et stratégiques pour penser et guider le développement de nouveaux modèles d’affaires de « services aux écosystèmes ». Afin de les compléter, nous ouvrons des pistes de conception de comptes et d’activités comptables pour accompagner une entreprise du secteur de l’environnement dans la négociation et la création collective de valeur écologique sur les territoires et dans la transformation de sa propre représentation et quantification de la valeur.

International audience; Integrated water cycle management requires the development of new approaches to assess the contributions of ecosystems to the protection and regulation of water resources, natural risk prevention, climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. One way to address this challenge is to test methods of ecosystem services integrated assessment and mapping, in which various stakeholders are involved in an iterative process of construction and discussion of the results. Lyonnaise des Eaux and UMR AMURE have been experimenting such an approach in Bordeaux for more than one year, in collaboration with the Nature Division of Bordeaux local authorities. This article begins by giving the general background of the research on ecosystem services. It then describes the current experience in Bordeaux, the methods used and the first results.; La gestion collective du grand cycle de l’eau demande le développement de nouvelles approches permettant d’évaluer la contribution des écosystèmes à la protection et à la régulation de la ressource en eau, à la prévention des risques naturels, à la lutte contre le changement climatique ou encore à la conservation de la biodiversité. Les démarches d’évaluation intégrée et de cartographie des services écosystémiques sont une des pistes identifiées pour répondre à ce défi tout en associant étroitement les acteurs du territoire dans la construction et l’évaluation des résultats. Lyonnaise des Eaux en partenariat avec l’UMR AMURE testent depuis plus d’un an une telle démarche sur le territoire de Bordeaux, en collaboration avec la direction de la nature de la communauté urbaine de Bordeaux. Cet article vise à resituer cette expérience dans le paysage actuel de la recherche sur les services écosystémiques et à faire un premier retour sur la méthode de travail mise en place pour obtenir les données nécessaires à la modélisation ainsi que sur les premiers résultats cartographiques.