PRIMA, scaling up of case studies
Résumé
Facing structural change, European rural areas still fulfil multiple social, economic and ecological functions. Because of scale interplays and sustainability trade-offs, their future dynamics are yet particularly difficult to ascertain. PRIMA aims to develop methods for scaling down the assessment of policy impacts on multifunctional land-use and economic activities. The project focuses on agriculture, forestry, tourism, and ecosystem services, with special attention to the structural effects of the policies. An analysis of the strategic and planning documents in the case study areas highlights that many measures are targeted to several pillars of sustainable development, even though multifunctionality (MF) concept is often unaddressed. Because of the bottom-up governance of the European cohesion policy, a large variety of priorities and measures has been observed, so we oriented the first stakeholders interviews towards their major objectives and the specific measures they activate from the cohesion policy to reach their own objectives. We developed a working regional economic model that interacts between global changes (GTAP-IMAGE interactions) and multi-agent based tool at local level. It covers activities agriculture, forestry, services and nature. A start has been made with a program for downscaling. We are working on a procedure to generate the basic regional data for the input. We have to start data generation and theoretical and empirical work to improve on the allocation procedures of national developments to regions. Considering backbone scenarios, first modelling at European level started, with the identification of key economic and demographic factors that drive land use patterns at regional and local levels. External drivers and policies have been distinguished. GTAP and IMAGES have been linked to provide a working modelling framework. Last, we progressed towards enhancing the scope of IA methods, with a review of literature and extensive work between all workpackages.