Search

International audience; Land is a scarce resource and its depletion is related to a combination of demographic and economic factors. Hence, the changes in dietary habits and increase in world population that upturn the food demand, are intertwined with a context of increasing oil prices and rise of green capitalism that in turn impacts the demand in biofuel. A visible indicator of these phenomena is the increase, in recent years, of Large Scale Land Acquisitions (LSLAs) by private companies or states. Such land investments often lead to conflicts with local population and have raised issues regarding people's rights, the role of different production models and land governance. The aim of this work is to show how publicly available data about LSLAs can be modeled into complex network structures, thus showing how the application of advanced network analysis techniques can be used to better understand land trade dynamics. We use data collected by the Land Matrix Initiative on LSLAs to model three land trade networks: amulti-sectornetwork, a network centered on theminingsector and a network centered on theagricultureone. Then we provide an extended analysis of such networks which includes: (i) a structural analysis, (ii) the definition of a score, namelyLSLA-score, which allows to rank the countries based on their investing/target role in the land trade network, (iii) an analysis of the land trade context which takes into account theLSLA-scoreranking and the correlation between network features and several country development indicators, (iv) an analysis centered on the discover and analysis of network motifs (i.e., recurring patterns in the land trade network), which provides insights into complex and diverse relations between countries. Our analyses showed how the land trade market is massively characterized by a Global North-Global South dynamic, even if the investing power of emerging economies also has a major impact in creating relations between different sub-regions of the world. Moreover, the analyses on the mining and agriculture sectors highlighted how the role of several countries in the trade network may drastically change depending of the investment sector, showing diverse hierarchies between investor, intermediate and target countries.

Dans un contexte économique incertain et face à des demandes sociétales de plus en plus pressantes, les systèmes de production animale et végétale doivent proposer de nouveaux modèles productifs, économiquement viables, respectueux de l'environnement, socialement acceptables et équitables, autrement dit, contribuant au développement durable. Cependant, sa mise en oeuvre est complexe et les changements tangibles qu'il engendre encore peu visibles. C'est à cette critique que répond l'évaluation multicritère de la durabilité en agriculture, en contribuant à la formalisation de ce concept. Mais évaluer la contribution des systèmes de production agricole au développement durable ne saurait se résumer à un calcul des émissions de gaz à effet de serre ou du taux de nitrate dans les eaux. Il s'agit en effet de considérer les nombreux processus biologiques, économiques et sociaux à l'oeuvre et de couvrir l'ensemble des échelles spatiotemporelles. Les approches sont ainsi variées et le domaine de l'évaluation, en plein essor, est foisonnant. Alors, comment choisir la méthode et les outils les mieux adaptés à chaque situation ? Pourquoi et comment développer sa propre méthode d'évaluation ? Comment considérer l'agriculture dans ces différentes dimensions et échelles ? Quels sont les écueils à éviter ? Face à la multitude des méthodes existantes, le choix et la conduite d'une évaluation multicritère peuvent s'avérer complexes. Ce guide méthodologique vous accompagne ainsi, étape par étape, dans la mise en oeuvre d'une démarche en cohérence avec vos besoins. Pédagogique et didactique, il comporte de nombreux exemples s'appuyant sur l'élevage et les grandes cultures, des figures aidant à la compréhension des concepts, des encadrés traitant de notions clés ainsi qu'un bilan à la fin de chaque chapitre rappelant les points essentiels.

International audience; La recherche publique agronomique au Cameroun, comme dans d'autres pays subit une baisse de ses financments structurels despuis une quizaine d'années. Pour combler cette perte de ressources, les chercheurs se tournent de plus en, plus vers les entreprises privées. Cet article interroge les indicateurs qui permettent d'avaluer ces évolutions dans leurs conséquences sur le développement

Over the last 30 years, aquaculture has experienced an unprecedented development in global animal production with an average yearly growth rate of over 10% between 1980 and 2000 (FAO, 2009). During the same period, capture fisheries saw their progression gradually grind to a standstill and growth stopped from 1995 (total catch fluctuating between 90 and 95 Mt/year according to the year). The growth of aquaculture, despite its benefits and the fact that it is the only way to meet the increase in demand for sea products, evaluated at 270Mt in 2050 (Chevassus au Louis et Lazard, 2009; Wijkstrom, 2003), raises a certain number of issues directly related to its sustainable development. Amongst these are issues related to feed for the farmed organisms, to their biological diversity, to the farms’ economic sustainability, to the impact of aquaculture development on social equity and to the set of arrangements constituting the sector’s governance. Feed, for example, is currently the subject of significant controversy as shown by the emblematic article of Naylor et al. (2000) that exposes the impact on catches of the massive use of fish meal and fish oil in fish and prawn aquaculture and advocates the return to sparser aquaculture systems, directly inspired by traditional Asian systems which use more extensive techniques based on polyculture and fertilisation and where artificial feed is only seen as a potential supplement. This diagnosis, although interesting as it generated much debate, was, however, incomplete and, in fact, inaccurate: by focusing on a single criterion and a single dimension (environmental) of sustainability, the authors were led to make proposals that had no chance of being adopted by the actors. De facto, farming systems have continued to intensify and this has led to a sustained increase in the use of