JASSUR project is intending to study functions, uses, modalities of functioning and potential risks or dangers resulting from associative gardens, in emerging sustainable cities. Those urban associative gardens, which can be referred to as several names, and exist under various status and forms, are growing up in many industrialized countries, including France. This project aims at identifying required actions to maintain, restore, transform or even develop the effect of associative gardens on urban territories facing the challenges of sustainability. In order to do this, the project leans on a consortium of 12 research partners (various institutions) and citizen organizations in seven French cities (Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nancy, Nantes, Paris and Toulouse). JASSUR project is based on a central question: what services do urban associative gardens provide for cities sustainable development? Ecosystem services rendered to the city, understood as in the complete meaning of the term proposed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (provisioning, regulating, supporting, cultural services) are still largely unknown. Facing the knowledge to develop in order to go through these services, JASSUR project assumes that studying food services provided by these urban associative gardens, which are very poorly studied, is a link between: • A bio-physico-chemical characterization of soils and products of the gardens: potential risks of pollution due to urban context (soil, atmosphere) are central as they may counteract the food supply service; • A socio-technical characterization of gardeners practices, both regarding their choices in terms of crops, their production techniques and the quantitative and qualitative contribution of garden products to insure a food supply and a better diet to families; • A socio-political characterization of the governance of these spaces in urban areas, particularly in terms of managing their locations, ways of functioning, potential environmental and health risks. The scientific program is organized in tasks, the first one being coordination (task 1) and four knowledge production tasks. Task 2 deals with the actors involved in the establishment and life of the gardens, their governance and their place in urban planning. Task 3 analyzes food supply service (cropping practices, yields and uses of products, measures of consumption and nutrient intake, gardener’s representations as to the advantages and dangers of gardens). Task 4 deals with regulatory and support ecosystem services, emphasizing those related to biodiversity and water regulation. This work also addresses metrology of dangers through two major sources of potential pollution: the soil and the atmosphere. Task 5, tasks 3 and 4 related, will suggest strategies that communities may use to manage pollution (including bioremediation and phytoremediation). Deliverables will be in each task and inter-task various scientific productions (disciplinary and interdisciplinary publications, participation in conferences), but also decision support for managing gardens for the purpose of city partners (eg, maps of risks). In particular, animations with these cities are planned.

Private gardens make up the largest proportion of urban green spaces and are also the most frequently used type of outdoor space. As such, they contribute significantly to the preservation of urban biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and services, and have been shown to be valuable for human well-being and health, and for promoting everyday experiences of nature for urban dwellers. The GARLAND project focuses on peri-urban gardens, including vegetable gardens, which have been little studied. The suitability of peri-urban gardens for biodiversity is determined by a combination of socio-ecological and environmental factors operating at different scales. The project proposes an interdisciplinary approach with ecology, sociology and geography to explore the social and ecological drivers, motivations and barriers for better biodiversity management in private gardens at both individual and community scales. The main aim of the project is to develop a comprehensive qualitative and quantitative understanding of the determinants of biodiversity within these peri-urban garden socio-ecosystems, in order to identify opportunities for biodiversity conservation. The project will also investigate whether some garden-related practices tend to increase householders' sense of connection with nature, which would be a potential lever for increasing general pro-environmental behaviour among urban dwellers. The project focuses on two sub-sectors of the extended peri-urban belt of Greater Paris (Île-de-France) with contrasting socio-economic characteristics. The data acquisition process is structured into three work packages. The first one will explore the role played by local public policies on the presence and profile of gardens in the peri-urban and rural areas of the Ile-de-France region. The hypothesis is that local choices made by planning authorities at the city level may conduct to heterogeneous situations in terms of regulations that may foster, or by contrast, hinder garden preservation. The second work package will study the relationship between householders and their gardens while taking into account the socioeconomic context. In particular, the objective is to determine the main householder factors influencing the proportion of vegetated surface in gardens and the heterogeneity of habitats, two parameters that are very determinant for biodiversity. The potential links between householders’ relationships with their garden and the biodiversity within these gardens will also be examined. The third work package will study how the diversity of flowering plants and pollinators within peri-urban gardens are influenced by the interplay between ecological factors (garden and landscape characteristics) and social factors (householder and urban characteristics). Flowering plants and pollinators were chosen as study models for the biodiversity analyses, because they are prevalent in many gardens and comparatively easy to inventory, and respond to landscape structure at a relatively small spatial scale. At the societal level, the project should allow to identify potential levers for action and to co-construct solutions with stakeholders to promote garden biodiversity at both the municipal and householder level.

The ECOTERA project aims at producing multidisciplinary knowledge and develop tools to allow local actors to explore under what conditions the eco-efficiency of agricultural production systems can lead to sustainable development trajectories of their territory. It will be carried out in the Brazilian Amazon, in the municipality of Paragominas. Indeed, global changes particularly affect the Amazon region, redefining the relations between agricultural and forest production and the environment. In the Brazilian Amazon, agricultural expansion over forest areas, which was the « engine of development » during five decades, is no longer possible. This breaking point imposed by strong interventions of the federal state, led to a drastic reduction of deforestation. In this now limited space, Amazonian territories need to plan and promote a rapid land transition while meeting increasing social and productive demands. Faced with this challenge, a new political discourse emerges, driven by agricultural leaders and elected officials. They want to promote the eco-efficiency of production systems, to become more competitive and increase value of products through a green image, allowing a new type of development of territories. In this context, Paragominas is emblematic, as it has implemented a "Green Municipality" model. However, a territorial diagnostic study carried out in 2012 shows that although the objectives of reducing deforestation are met, the knowledge and tools to promote ecoefficiency throughout the territory remain limited and the risk of segregation within the territory are high. The project is organized around a coordination task (task 1) and three scientific tasks which link the farm and territory levels. Task 2 evaluates the ecoefficiencies of production systems and landscapes with spatial indicators and mapping tools. Task 3 analyzes the geographical and organized proximities (groups of actors, networks) and how they influence the territorial innovation dynamics (construction and appropriation of technical and organizational models) related to eco-efficiency and adaptation to global changes. Task 4 will incorporate the results of the previous two tasks by building territorial development scenarios and linking them to farm level scenarios. In order to build operational knowledge, this process involves Companion Modeling (Commod), in which actors consider various options of public policies and development constraints and opportunities related to global change. This approach will build and explore strategies for territorial and individual action which can inspire other municipalities to reconcile the search for ecoefficiency and sustainable territorial development. The EcoTera project relies on a multidisciplinary group of fifteen French and Brazilian researchers who have been working and collaborating for most of a decade in the Amazon. To this main team, have been added French institutions of references on key approaches for the project: eco-efficiency (UMR ESO) and proximity (UMR SADAPT). This team also benefits from the strategic relay of CIFOR and of different scientific networks.

In the 20th century, agriculture has experienced major gains in productivity via homogenization and intensive use of input, two key components of the dominant model of agriculture in developed countries. This model is jeopardized by the awareness of rapid global change, increased environmental stochasticity and the need for greater sustainability of agriculture. A new paradigm is emerging, in which biodiversity and the mechanisms underlying its dynamics are considered assets for a sustainable agriculture relying more on ecological functions within agroecosystems. Crop genetic diversity should play an essential role in this context, as a key element contributing to agriculture multi-functionality and to the resilience of agroecosystems under rapid climate change and decreased chemical inputs. However, the use of genetic diversity within agroecosystems faces ecological, socio-economic, organizational and regulatory challenges. The main goal of the project is to better evaluate the possible roles of within-crop genetic diversity to reinforce the multi-functionality and resilience of cropping systems under global change. WHEATAMIX focuses on a major cereal, wheat, in a central area of production, the Paris basin. WHEATAMIX develops a highly multidisciplinary approach involving geneticists, agronomists, ecophysiologists, ecologists, economists, and management scientists, as well as key stakeholders (“Chambres d’Agriculture”, farmers). It is structured in four complementary work-packages: - WP1 will characterise key morphological/ecophysiological traits and genetic variability of wheat genotypes. We will examine the plastic response of these traits to plant-plant interactions and test how trait complementarity affects the performance of wheat genotypes in blends through experiments and modelling. - WP2 will quantify multiple ecosystem services provided by variety diversity within wheat fields: yield (including grain quality) and its stability, regulation of foliar diseases, insect pest and weed biocontrol, maintenance of soil fertility, along with biodiversity conservation. We will analyse trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services, as well as links between particular baskets of services and bundles of traits of varieties. - WP3 will study the techno-economic interest of blends and associated baskets of services for -and their acceptability by- key stakeholders. We will explore the organisational and economic bases of blend choice by the wheat chain (from seed companies to millers), with a focus on the Paris basin. Existing lock-in to the use of associations of wheat varieties will be analysed. These 3 WPs will use common, complementary experimental approaches: i) individual plant phenotyping to characterize traits and their plasticity for 50 wheat varieties; ii) a main diversity experiment (65 100m2 wheat plots with 1, 2, 4 or 8 varieties, under low input) to quantify variety diversity effect on ecosystem services; iii) replicates of the same diversity experiment in 5 sites across France using smaller (7m2) plots, under low and high inputs, to test the robustness of wheat diversity under a wide range of environmental conditions; iv) a network of 50 farms, encompassing agro-climatic variability in the Paris basin, to compare the ecological and techno-economic performance of blends with that of monocultures, in direct link with key stakeholders. - WP4 will combine results from WP1-3 and mobilize key stakeholders to build scenarios of the development of wheat variety blends in the Paris Basin considering various future climatic and economic contexts. Opportunities offered by and impacts of the introduction of wheat variety blends in the Paris production basin will be assessed on the basis of these scenarios. A strategy for the dissemination of project results will also be implemented.

How and to what extent the French food production system could ensure healthy and sustainable diets for its population while increasing its capability for self-sufficiency? From a political point of view, there is a growing demand from consumers/citizens for what is considered a better control of the food chain and its social/societal externality, for a more sustainable development with a re-appropriation of the territorial space at proximity. Political leaders now seem to follow and even support this trend, with political agendas. However, the goal of self-sufficiency is also criticized for various reasons, and, above all, the many dimensions of the food system, such as health, environmental impact, acceptability and self-sufficiency, are not necessarily aligned. We aim to analyze the tensions surrounding the implementation of a higher self-sufficiency in the agricultural production of foods ensuring healthier and more sustainable diets. We will identify the pressures for an increase or decrease in the different domestic agricultural productions, when aiming to produce more healthy and sustainable diets while reducing and redistributing the imports. We will provide an analysis of the conflicts over the different objectives (nutrition/health, environment and self-sufficiency) and we will explore the trade-offs on which an optimal food system could be based. We will also describe the prospective adaptability of the system to alleviate the tensions, for instance with changes in agricultural productions and transportation modes. We will analyze the regional and local contingencies and the extent to which agricultural socio-economic metabolism can adapt to support local transformation to better meet a new prospective food demand. This interdisciplinary research project combines both systemic approaches considering the population diets, the production capability and transport network at the level of the country and detailed case scenarios at the level of small agricultural regions. The approach largely resort on modelling, with optimization and simulation models to identify the demand for agricultural products needed for healthier and more sustainable diets, iteratively recalibrate the environmental footprint of the reshaped domestic production, and understand the key parameters that favor or oppose the matching of production system network to this prospective new demand. Therefore, the research project includes (i) analyzing the conflicts between nutrition/health, environment and self-sufficiency, and delivering compromised diets as scenarios of demand for agricultural products, (ii) understanding how agricultural production could be reshaped in the national network so as to lower energy and GHGe associated with transports, and (iii) understanding how locally production areas could be transformed with different land uses and livestock allocations so that the production would better align with changes required in the national demand. The project includes a strong dissemination program toward the scientific community, the general public and political stakeholders.