Le journal de l'IRD
n° 48 January-February-March 2009
Translator: Nicholas Flay
Abstracts for the international issue
p. 7-9
Research
p. 1/p. 16 Interview
Soils and their services
nterview with
Esther
Duflo:
Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and cofounder of Abdul
Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
(J-PAL), which has a branch at the
Paris School of Economics. She is also
the first ever holder of the Collège de
France Chair “Knowledge Against
Poverty”. For Sciences au Sud she
gives an overview of the “experimental approach” in development economics.
© A. Clopet
Island of the flower people
same time as efforts are made to conserve
their biodiversity.
Up to now, these objectives have been identified and sometimes planned for by the various agencies, without consultation between
the actors involved in managing the different
aspects. That kind of approach brings potential conflicts and especially the risk of accelerating the soil degradation process which
affects to varying degrees 60% of the Earth’s
cultivated areas.
The major issue for research is to identify scenarios that will allow the best compromise?
at local, regional and national scale? between the range of soil functions to produce
the ecosystem goods and services in sufficient quantity, while respecting the integrity
of the system and the inhabitants’ quality of
life.
All that implies detailed knowledge of the
links between policies, systems of production
or management, and ecological systems.
Data collection in line with this research will
provide ways of identifying policies that
would have the best chance of being effective and applicable. The latter point is partic-
p. 12 IRD World
Africa-Europe
p. 4 Partners
Visibility on the international scene
T
© AAMP/Y. Gladu
© IRD/C. Lett
he IRD research unit Ummisco, focusing on
Mathematical and Computer Modelling of Complex
Systems, is one of the Institute’s first joint international
units. This new type of structure aims to link laboratories
made up of mixed teams of full-time French and overseas
researchers. Ummisco has been built upon the IRD’s old
Geodes research unit and its partner teams in France,
Africa and South-East Asia.
t a time when threats to the marine
environment are increasing, France is
setting up an ambitious programme of
development of marine protection areas
(MPAs) along its coastlines. In line with this
the Agency for Marine Protected Areas
recently signed a framework agreement
with the IRD to initiate a joint scientific and
technical effort in this field.
or the first time in their common history, Africa and the European Union have incorporated a section on scientific research in their strategic partnership agreement. This was
signed on 8 and 9 December 2007 in Lisbon. France is at the head of the European group
in charge of this aspect of the agreement and has assigned the AIRD drive its implementation. The Cnes and Inria are associated with the AIRD for directing this partnership, entitled
“Science, Information Society and Space”. Portugal will be in charge of following-up the
“Space” component of the partnership.
p. 3 News
p. 2 News
p. 1 News
Partnership agreement with
Brazilian National Institute
for Space Research
An unexpected
reproduction strategy
Will glacier melt make
La Paz thirsty?
New-found plankton
changes prediction prospects
T
s a follow-up to the signature of
strategic partnership agreements
between France and Brazil and the official
launch of the Year of France in Brazil, IRD
director-general Michel Laurent signed a
partnership agreement with Gilberto
Camara, director general of the Brazilian
National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
The objective of this agreement is jointly to
develop and promote, at both regional and
international scales, the innovatory uses of
space data in the fields of environment, climate change, sustainable development of
forests and epidemiology.
ish species of the Cichlidae family are
occupying new living spaces in the
great lakes of Africa. In doing so, they
have adopted an unusual reproductive
strategy. Normally inhabitants of the
lower reaches, the benthic zone, they
have colonized the upper water layers, in
the pelagic zone. Yet their reproduction
strategies are not copied from ordinary
pelagic species which produce enormous
quantities of small eggs released to the
hazards of open waters. The newcomers
have rather drawn on the reproduction
methods of their own benthic ancestors,
and developed them to the limits.
rner
© GF. Tu
© IRD/B. Francou
© AJ. Ribbink
he discovery of a new group of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria in the Pacific
Ocean, but also off the Mediterranean
coast near Marseille, has turned current
notions on oceanic ecosystems upside
down.
F
A
A
F
p. 12 IRD World
© Présidence fédérative
de la rép. du Brésil/R. Stuckert
Towards a network
of Marine Protected Areas
The AIRD at the heart of a science partnership
T
© A. Clopet
p. 5 Partners
1. Taking into account
the vegetation cover
they support.
A
s glaciologist Alvaro Soruco explains,
“The glaciers are receding rapidly, on
the four drainage basins that feed the city
of La Paz. Every year since 1975 they have
lost the equivalent of an 80 cm layer of
water spread over their entire surface
area!”.
Working with French and Bolivian teams,
he has studied volume variations in 21 glaciers in Bolivia’s Cordillera Real. The
researchers used series of aerial photographs of the region taken between
1963 and 2006. Image analysis revealed
that the glaciers’ volume varied little until
1975, but have been undergoing substantial melting since that date.
© IRD/D. Rechner
p.10 Research
be fully determined. A notable exception
among these services is climate regulation.
In 2007, for example, carbon storage in soils
represented a contribution of nearly 60% to
climate regulation, the remaining 40%
being ensured by the oceans (source:
lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk). However, it is in
natural ecosystems that the bulk of this carbon fixing takes place, as part of the total
carbon released to the atmosphere results
from the various ways in which land is used.
The issues and challenges linked to the use
of soils in the coming years are highly
diverse and societies’ demands are often
contradictory.
The primary objective is to be able to feed
9 billion inhabitants by 2050, which implies
a 50% rise of production over the current
figure.
Soils will also have to be used increasingly to
alleviate the predicted shortage of fossil
fuels. They are also expected to continue
their carbon-capture service, whether in
agrosystems or natural environments, provide protection from erosion and floods
through their hydrological properties, at the
© IRD/Alain Pierret
oils are a precious resource for humanity owing to the irreplaceable functions
they perform. They are a resource for food,
fibre and materials production, they ensure
rainwater storage, purification and transfer,
recycle dead organic matter. They also have
a role in carbon storage, thus contributing
to climate regulation, more strongly even
than the oceans1. Soils harbour an
immense biodiversity, still poorly known,
which performs these services while regulating growth of plants or possibly protecting them against aggressor organisms and
diseases, many of whose pathogens live
within the soil.
They are also a fundamental element of culture, recognized as such in many different
societies. Even though most societies, even
the most advanced ones, show a surprising
lack of interest in this resource. Symptomatic
of this is the fact that the European Union
has long been issuing directives on air or
water management, but the directive on
soils will not come into force for at least
seven years.
The current state of these ecological functions, designated under the general term
Ecosystem Services, has been assessed in
the world “Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment” report. Agricultural production has risen spectacularly over the past
40 years (+ 150%) with a fall of more than
50% of the average price. This has come
with a fall in the number of malnourished
people, up to the late 1990s. This though
has been achieved to the detriment of other
services which have suffered degradations
to varying degrees. Another cost is biodiversity depletion, the extent of which is yet to
© IRD/JL. Janeau
S
© BBC
© H. Giacobino
I
he Flower People of Siberut in the
Mentawai Islands of Indonesia have
been at the centre of research by IRD
researchers. A multidisciplinary approach
was adopted focusing on understanding
of the past in order to consider the future
of this society and its environment.
ularly important in regions where application
of environmental laws is difficult to ensure in
vast sparsely populated areas.
Payment for these ecosystem services (or
compensation for ecosystem services) is the
economic mechanism recommended for
financing actions for soil protection or soil
system management, whose cost is not
directly covered by the sale of products from
arable farming, stock rearing or forestry. For
economists the development and improvement of these tools is a hard task. They have
to identify potential payers who use these
services, at local, regional, national or even
global scale. The principle of free ecosystem
services and the practice of not taking them
into account in balances of the value of
Natural Capital and the costs associated with
its degradation is steadily being abandoned.
Further approaches are still largely to be
invented.
This is a new research area which is based on
cross-disciplinary approaches and the search
for new theoretical models for finding a way
through the complexity of interactions and
identify the possible
socio-economic leverage, and avoid disaster
threshold effects. And
train and persuade the
different actors to
adopt a new form of
multifunctional soil
management, probably the only viable
approach given the
differing pressures that
are now coming to
bear on this resource.
These diazotroph cyanobacteria, picoplanktonic in size (0.5 to 1.5 μm), are highly reactive to temperature change and to pollution.
They should be taken into account in studies
to predict the impact of large-scale environmental changes on the oceans.
Consult the articles in full on the IRD Internet site: http://www.ird.fr
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