Multi acteurs, multi activités : simulations multi agents pour la détection des changements dans l'organisation sociale dans les villages de l'Ouest nigérien

International audienceNotre objectif est de démontrer, au travers de simulations multi agents, l'importance pour un objectif de pérennité de la pluriactivité et de la pluri-décision au sein des familles et ce, en simulant les activités individuelles principales (céréaliculture du mil, migration saisonnière, maraîchage et petit élevage) observées dans les villages du Fakara (région sud-ouest du Niger), mais aussi les conditionnalités sociales et économiques qui en rendent l'accès possible aux différents types de villageois. Deux types d'organisation des familles sont envisagées, l'une unitaire, où les familles restent solidaires, et l'autre non coopérative, où les familles sont mononucléaires. Nos résultats montrent l'impact de ces organisations familiales sur la répartition des revenus et les niveaux de vie moyens de chaque type de villageois. Ils suggèrent également que l'organisation unitaire, prédominante en milieu soudanien, est une version plus " productive " du " système " mais rend celui-ci beaucoup plus fragile aux aléas climatiques. Nous supposons dès lors un basculement historique dans les années 90 d'un mode d'organisation unitaire vers un mode " non coopératif " pour cette région

Simple is beautiful ? Building a simple climate model for modelling archaeological issues

International audienceArchaeological and paleo-environmental models do not focus on climatology dynamics but need to integrate climate evolutions within their simulations of Archaeological and paleo-environmental models do not focus on climatology dynamics but need to integrate climate evolutions within their simulations of human-environment issues

Le pouvoir des savoirs : enjeux et impacts des concepts sur le développement rural pour le Sahel nigérien

National audienceL'article présente dans le cas du Niger un état des lieux des conceptions des acteurs de développement. Face à un monde rural en plein bouleversement, les opérateurs intègrent difficilement les évolutions des paradigmes sur le développement rural : un raisonnement malthusien, combiné à une conception des villages comme des systèmes fermés et des stéréotypes sur les modes d'organisation des familles favorisent une représentation des communautés qui limite de fait la palette, l'ampleur et l'impact réel des actions. Pourtant, les modes d'enquête, comme les protocoles de négociation et de répartition des pouvoirs existent et sont proposés. La famine de 2004-2005 a illustré l'écart entre objectifs affichés et pratiques par la difficulté d'élaborer des outils d'action au-delà du volet diagnostic. L'article s'achève par un plaidoyer pour assumer le volet politique inhérent à toute action de développement local

Hétérogénéité cachée du milieu, homogénéité imposée d'un modèle de mise en valeur agricole : une superposition à l'origine d'une extrême diversité des scénarios d'évolution : Le cas de la zone tampon de la réserve forestière de U Minh Thùong (delta du Mékong, Vietnam)

International audienceHétérogénéité cachée du milieu, homogénéité imposée d'un modèle de mise en valeur agricole : une superposition à l'origine d'une extrême diversité des scénarios d'évolution : Le cas de la zone tampon de la réserve de U Minh Thùong (delta du Mékong, Vietnam)

Assessing health risk using regional mappings based on local perceptions: A comparative study of three different hazards

International audienceUsually risk assessment falls within the competence of “hard sciences”through environmental and epidemiological measurements, evaluations, and modeling. Even if these approaches bring accurate assessment and evaluation of environmental processes, the perception of local inhabitants is often excluded or at least relegated to second place. Evaluation of human vulnerabilities and capacities to face such hazards requires us to understand the perceptions of the population exposed. Three case studies (Lao, Tunisia, and Ecuador) are presented where we applied a perception-based regional mapping, a mapping tool based on local perceptions, for assessing the connection between land uses and health issues. A selection of the results collected on these three study areas show that the perception of local inhabitants provides a good spatial representation of the different contaminations observed locally, with a good consistency with external data. It also indicates for a certain number of cases that the contamination extends far beyond the simulated radius and impacts peripheral areas. Beyond the analysis of such a method (methodological bias, spatial representation bias, etc.), the objective is to combine our results with epidemiological measurement

Draped heterogeneity, forced uniformity : when agro-environmental policies drive family development : the U Minh Thuong forest reserve, (Mekong delta, Vietnam)

International audienceThe U Minh Thượng natural reserve was created during the 1990s with a surrounding buffer zone where 3,500 households have been settled between 1992 and 1995, each household on a lot of 4 hectares. From a social point of view, the settlers were selected as 'poor people' or war veterans. A social discrimination was slowly built in favour of the latter. Despite an apparent homogeneity, the environment shows slight variations which has huge effects on the potential of the lots. From 1992 to 1998, the provincial government applied uniformly different management policies, despite the fact that this repeated "new deal" of the variability among households and lots, produced various outcomes from total destruction to a real support to households. Finally, the support of international environmental non-governmental organizations enhanced a pro-nature hard-line that has affected farmers' livelihoods. This 'real world' social experiment enhances the necessity to at least understand the needs and constraints at a lower scale, especially for such a vast area

La Montagne intérieure, épreuve initiatique individuelle de lucidité dans Le Seigneur des Anneaux

International audienceL'oeuvre majeure de J. R. R. Tolkien, Le Seigneur des Anneaux (1954-1955), est maintenant si connue qu'elle a pris rang de mythe populaire depuis sa transposition cinématographique par Peter Jackson (2001-2003). Dans cette oeuvre, la montagne n'est pas un lieu de vie, c'est un lieu d'affrontement et de passage d'un état à un autre

Simulating Rural Environmentally and Socio-Economically Constrained Multi-Activity and Multi-Decision Societies in a Low-Data Context: A Challenge Through Empirical Agent-Based Modeling

Development issues in developing countries belong to complex situations where society and environment are intricate. However, such sites lack the necessary amount of reliable, checkable data and information, while these very constraining factors determine the populations' evolutions, such as villagers living in Sahelian environments. Beyond a game-theory model that leads to a premature selection of the relevant variables, we build an individual-centered, empirical, KIDS-oriented (Keep It Descriptive & Simple), and multidisciplinary agent-based model focusing on the villagers\' differential accesses to economic and production activities according to social rules and norms, mainly driven by social criteria from which gender and rank within the family are the most important, as they were observed and registered during individual interviews. The purpose of the work is to build a valid and robust model that overcome this lack of data by building a individual specific system of behaviour rules conditioning these differential accesses showing the long-term catalytic effects of small changes of social rules. The model-building methodology is thereby crucial: the interviewing process provided the behaviour rules and criteria while the context, i.e. the economic, demographic and agro-ecological environment is described following published or unpublished literature. Thanks to a sensitivity analysis on several selected parameters, the model appears fairly robust and sensitive enough. The confidence building simulation outputs reasonably reproduces the dynamics of local situations and is consistent with three authors having investigated in our site. Thanks to its empirical approach and its balanced conception between sociology and agro-ecology at the relevant scale, i.e. the individual tied to social relations, limitations and obligations and connected with his/her biophysical and economic environment, the model can be considered as an efficient "trend provider" but not an absolute "figure provider" for simulating rural societies of the Nigrien Sahel and testing scenarios on the same context. Such ABMs can be a useful interface to analyze social stakes in development projects.Rule-Based Modelling, Rural Sahel, Confidence Building, Low-Data Context, Social Criteria

Investigating social conflicts linked to water resources trhough agent-based modelling

International audienceOver the next decades, natural resources and water resources in particular are likely to be one of the major origins of social conflicts. To date however, no model enables the study of coupled dynamics of hydrology, water use and social conflicts. Building such a model requires identifying the key concepts, entities and processes that are present in much field cases and have to be included into the model. The research presented in this paper takes place in a more general project named MAELIA for Multi-agent for Environmental Norms Impact Assessment. The purpose of MAELIA is to provide a decision-support model helping decision makers and stakeholders to manage water resources. This model aims to be generic enough for it to be applied in various field cases at different scales. We describe the actors involved in water management or water use using an agent-based approach. Water monitoring institutions and water users are described as agents in interaction within a stylised representation of a watershed basin. We propose a conceptual model that describes not only the hydrology in the basin and the water consumption behaviour of users, but also the representation of both the users at the institutional level and the power relationships that determine the arbitration of norms about water use. We propose two possible uses of this model. The first is the analysis of the impacts of several norms for detecting potential conflicts. The second possible use explores the local formulation of norms given the balance of powers in already settled social conflicts. This generic platform modelling conflicts on natural resources may thereby provide new insights into the analysis of well-known natural resource related conflicts, such as the Gauvery dispute in India

Targeting rural development interventions : empirical agent-based modeling in Nigerien villages

International audienceThe aim of this article is to analyze the impact of development interventions on the population of three Nigerien villages that differ in terms of their agro-ecological, social and economic characteristics. This is performed by simulating the behavior of individuals in an agent-based modeling framework which integrates the village characteristics as well as the family internal rules that condition access to economic and production activities. Villagers are differentiated according to the social and agro-ecological constraints they are subjected to. Two development project interventions are simulated, assuming no land scarcity: increasing the availability of inorganic fertilizers for farmers and an inventory credit technique based on millet grain. Two distinct approaches were used to model the rationale of farmers' decision making: gains or losses in economic value or gains or losses in within-village ''reputation''. Our results show that village populations do not respond en masse to development interventions. Reputation has little effect on the population behavior and should be considered more as a local proxy for wealth amongst villagers, suggesting the monetization of these societies. Populations involve themselves in the two simulated development interventions only at sites where savings are possible. Some level of household food security and investment capacity is actually required to take part in the development interventions, which are largely conditioned by family manpower and size. As long as uncultivated land remains available in the village territory, support for inorganic fertilizers has little impact in the absence of any intensification process. Inventory credit engages a maximum of 25% of the population at the site with medium agro-ecological conditions. Therefore, both interventions should be viewed as a potential support tool for a limited part of the population capable of going beyond the survival level, but not as a generic poverty-alleviation panacea