Artificial Intelligence for a Fair, Just, and Equitable World

From the 1970s onward, we started to dream of the leisure society in which, thanks to technological progress and consequent increase in productivity, working hours would be minimized and we would all live in abundance. We all could devote our time almost exclusively to personal relationships, contact with nature, sciences, the arts, playful activities, and so on. Today, this utopia seems more unattainable than it did then. Since the 21st century, we have seen inequalities increasingly accentuated: of the increase in wealth in the United States between 2006 and 2018, adjusted for inflation and population growth, more than 87% went to the richest 10% of the population, and the poorest 50% lost wealth [1] . Following the crisis of 2008, social inequalities, rights violations, planetary degradation, and the climate emergency worsened and increased (see [2] ). In 2019, the world's 2153 billionaires had more wealth than 4.6 billion people [3] . The World Bank estimates that COVID-19 will push up to 150 million people into extreme poverty [4]

Assortative mating and differential male mating success in an ash hybrid zone population

BACKGROUND: The structure and evolution of hybrid zones depend mainly on the relative importance of dispersal and local adaptation, and on the strength of assortative mating. Here, we study the influence of dispersal, temporal isolation, variability in phenotypic traits and parasite attacks on the male mating success of two parental species and hybrids by real-time pollen flow analysis. We focus on a hybrid zone population between the two closely related ash species Fraxinus excelsior L. (common ash) and F. angustifolia Vahl (narrow-leaved ash), which is composed of individuals of the two species and several hybrid types. This population is structured by flowering time: the F. excelsior individuals flower later than the F. angustifolia individuals, and the hybrid types flower in-between. Hybrids are scattered throughout the population, suggesting favorable conditions for their local adaptation. We estimate jointly the best-fitting dispersal kernel, the differences in male fecundity due to variation in phenotypic traits and level of parasite attack, and the strength of assortative mating due to differences in flowering phenology. In addition, we assess the effect of accounting for genotyping error on these estimations. RESULTS: We detected a very high pollen immigration rate and a fat-tailed dispersal kernel, counter-balanced by slight phenological assortative mating and short-distance pollen dispersal. Early intermediate flowering hybrids, which had the highest male mating success, showed optimal sex allocation and increased selfing rates. We detected asymmetry of gene flow, with early flowering trees participating more as pollen donors than late flowering trees. CONCLUSION: This study provides striking evidence that long-distance gene flow alone is not sufficient to counter-act the effects of assortative mating and selfing. Phenological assortative mating and short-distance dispersal can create temporal and spatial structuring that appears to maintain this hybrid population. The asymmetry of gene flow, with higher fertility and increased selfing, can potentially confer a selective advantage to early flowering hybrids in the zone. In the event of climate change, hybridization may provide a means for F. angustifolia to further extend its range at the expense of F. excelsior

Interacting regional-scale regime shifts for biodiversity and ecosystem services

Current trajectories of global change may lead to regime shifts at regional scales, driving coupled human–environment systems to highly degraded states in terms of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being. For business-as-usual socioeconomic development pathways, regime shifts are projected to occur within the next several decades, to be difficult to reverse, and to have regional- to global-scale impacts on human society. We provide an overview of ecosystem, socioeconomic, and biophysical mechanisms mediating regime shifts and illustrate how these interact at regional scales by aggregation, synergy, and spreading processes. We give detailed examples of interactions for terrestrial ecosystems of central South America and for marine and coastal ecosystems of Southeast Asia. This analysis suggests that degradation of biodiversity and ecosystem services over the twenty-first century could be far greater than was previously predicted. We identify key policy and management opportunities at regional to global scales to avoid these shifts

Forest Management, Conflict and Social–Ecological Systems in a Changing World

Conflicts are ubiquitous in forest management because of several overlapping temporal and spatial issues (see examples in tropical and temperate areas [...

Transformability as a Wicked Problem: A Cautionary Tale?

International audienceTransformability is increasingly promoted as a way of moving societies toward more sustainable futures in the era of the Anthropocene, mostly because the concept of resilience has fallen short in many instances where impacts on social-ecological systems are continuous, varied, and usually unknown. While such transformations can play a crucial role in improving the sustainability of social-ecological systems, they may lead to unexpected and undesirable outcomes. This literature review on social-ecological transformability and wicked problems seeks to shed light on and acknowledge some of the limitations of transformability regarding unforeseen conditions. We argue that wicked problems arise in transformation initiatives in the presence of high complexity, deep uncertainty, deep conflicts, and divergence among stakeholders, as well as scale mismatches concerning spatial, temporal, and institutional processes. Our findings may explain why some transformation initiatives fail to generate expected changes on the ground, mainly in two cases: (a) a polarized configuration that maintains the status quo of the system to be transformed and (b) an unforeseen transformation that causes the system to lurch from crisis to crisis. To conclude, we recommend using diagnostic questions to prevent wicked problems in social-ecological transformation

Unveiling cacao agroforestry sustainability through the socio-ecological systems diagnostic framework: the case of four amazonian rural communities in Ecuador

International audienceCacao cultivation is rapidly increasing in Latin America under the influence of public policies and external markets. In Ecuador, the cultivated surface of high quality cacao trees has doubled in the last 50 years, creating great expectations in neighboring countries. Here, we investigated the social-ecological sustainability of cacao-based agroforestry systems in four rural Amazonian highlands communities in eastern Ecuador, close to the region where cacao was once domesticated. Kichwa-and Shuar-speaking groups were interviewed by adapting Ostrom's institutional diagnostic framework for social-ecological systems. Through a set of specifically created indicator variables, we identified key interactions and outcomes to understand the fragility and the sustainability of those communities. The studied communities were fairly young, with land rights secured less than 30 years ago in most cases. Per-family surfaces were very restricted (typically one hectare) and plots were divided between cash producing crops and their own home food. The small production per household goes through a precarious commercialization by both intermediaries and cooperatives, making the cacao bean production merely sufficient for pocket money. Ties with specialist producers in one community close to the capital has promoted the use of native cacao lines. Elsewhere, improved varieties of high productivity are planted along native trees being commercialized indistinctly. The continuity of these communities currently depend on a reorganization of their demography with parts of the population working elsewhere, as cacao bean production alone will continue to be insufficient, and will compete with their food self-sufficiency

Data from: Identifying refugia from climate change using coupled ecological and genetic data in a transitional Mediterranean-temperate tree species

Populations occurring in areas of overlap between the current and future distribution of a species are particularly important because they can represent “refugia from climate change”. We coupled ecological and range-wide genetic variation data to detect such areas and to evaluate the impacts of habitat suitability changes on the genetic diversity of the transitional Mediterranean-temperate tree Fraxinus angustifolia. We sampled and genotyped 38 natural populations comprising 1006 individuals from across Europe. We found the highest genetic diversity in western and northern Mediterranean populations, as well as a significant west-to-east decline in genetic diversity. Areas of potential refugia that correspond to approximately 70% of the suitable habitat may support the persistence of more than 90% of the total number of alleles in the future. Moreover, based on correlations between Bayesian genetic assignment and climate, climate change may favour the westwards spread of the Black Sea gene pool in the long term. Overall, our results suggest that the northerly core areas of the current distribution contain the most important part of the genetic variation for this species and may serve as in situ macrorefugia from ongoing climate change. However, rear-edge populations of the southern Mediterranean may be exposed to a potential loss of unique genetic diversity owing to habitat suitability changes unless populations can persist in microrefugia that have facilitated such persistence in the past

Data from: Identifying refugia from climate change using coupled ecological and genetic data in a transitional Mediterranean-temperate tree species

Populations occurring in areas of overlap between the current and future distribution of a species are particularly important because they can represent “refugia from climate change”. We coupled ecological and range-wide genetic variation data to detect such areas and to evaluate the impacts of habitat suitability changes on the genetic diversity of the transitional Mediterranean-temperate tree Fraxinus angustifolia. We sampled and genotyped 38 natural populations comprising 1006 individuals from across Europe. We found the highest genetic diversity in western and northern Mediterranean populations, as well as a significant west-to-east decline in genetic diversity. Areas of potential refugia that correspond to approximately 70% of the suitable habitat may support the persistence of more than 90% of the total number of alleles in the future. Moreover, based on correlations between Bayesian genetic assignment and climate, climate change may favour the westwards spread of the Black Sea gene pool in the long term. Overall, our results suggest that the northerly core areas of the current distribution contain the most important part of the genetic variation for this species and may serve as in situ macrorefugia from ongoing climate change. However, rear-edge populations of the southern Mediterranean may be exposed to a potential loss of unique genetic diversity owing to habitat suitability changes unless populations can persist in microrefugia that have facilitated such persistence in the past

Evaluating climate change adaptation pathways through capital assessment: five case studies of forest social-ecological systems in France

Forest social-ecological systems (FSESs) can play a major role in both the mitigation of climate change, as well as the adaptation of local communities to it. In Europe, however, forests are highly fragmented and located close to human populations. This means that maintaining forest sustainability implies not only increasing ecosystem adaptation but also developing social adaptation. Hence, there is a need to understand the current priorities and management goals of forestry stakeholders, as well as their capacity to achieve functional and sustainable FSES in the future. The present study uses an interdisciplinary approach to evaluate stakeholders’ capacity to deal with climate change and top-down policies in different FSESs. We selected five FSESs in France that exhibit a range of climatic threats and socio-economic characteristics to estimate their adaptive capacity and transformative potential. The estimation is based on an assessment of different types of capital (i.e. natural, social, resources, governance) that involves evaluating 70 indicators through more than 70 semi-structured interviews with local stakeholders. Our results highlight that forest management in France, and more broadly in Europe, is mainly based on technical approaches, which build stakeholders’ confidence in their capacity to maintain the status quo. We observe asymmetry in capital distribution in some FSES, mainly through the maximization of the resources capital, which can constraint FSESs in a robustness trap. To develop adaptive capacity for small perturbations as well as transformability, forestry stakeholders should be encouraged to compromises. More balanced capital distribution, with decreased economic benefits, along with new technical approaches and changes to the landscape composition could be necessary to ensure the long-term adaptability of FSES to climate change.Outils écologiques et légaux pour la migration assistée des forêt