De la pensée des services écosystémiques à la représentation des interactions humaines avec la biosphère

This chapter revisits some important notions rooted in the sociological and ecological sciences that are, in the authors’ view, fundamental if ecosystem services thinking is to adequately represent human interactions with the biosphere1. Our aim is to explore how the ecosystem services concept can be reframed in order to redeem the seemingly lost message of human dependency on the biosphere. The ecosystem services concept came to prominence in the mid-1990s (Baskin, 1997; Daily, 1997) as a concerted effort by the conservation movement to put biodiversity on the global political agenda by riding the then-current wave of neo-liberal optimism and its associated belief in markets (Norgaard, 2010). A decade and a half on, it can be noted that an ever-increasing contingent of policy makers and researchers is embracing the ecosystem services concept for a variety of purposes associated with land, water and biodiversity management. This suggests a strong and rapid paradigm shift from a biodiversity conservation oriented approach towards a service provision oriented approach of ecosystem management (Potschin and Haines-Young, 2011). This paradigm shift is also reflected in science by the presence of the words ‘ecosystem services’ in such recently established journals as Ecosystem Services (Elsevier) and the International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services & Management (Taylor & Francis)