Rural Futures: Alternative Scenarios for Rural Society to 2020: Results of a French Study
Y.Léon, P.Perrier, C.Soulard. Institut National de la recherche Agronomique, 2010
The foresight approach presented in this paper is a contribution to a project set up by the French land planning agency (DATAR) on the theme "Land planning for the France of 2020". The future of rural space is a matter of concern because of the rapid economic and people polarization movement towards the metropolis and their sorroundings observed for the three last decades. This movement generates a serious depopulation in the French countryside.
Scarcity of Natural Resources and Vulnerability of the Planet. Towards the gardening of the planet
Uno Svedin
Formas and The Stockholm Resilience Center,Sweden
From The EU Conference ”The World in 2025”
Brussels, 24 September 2009
Anthropogenic pressures on the Earth System have reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. A new approach is proposed to global sustainability in which we define planetary boundaries within which we expect that humanity can operate safely. Transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental- to planetary-scale systems. The proposed concept of “planetary boundaries” lays the groundwork for shifting our approach to governance and management, away from the essentially sectoral analyses of limits to growth aimed at minimizing negative externalities, toward the estimation of the safe space for human development. Planetary boundaries define, as it were, the boundaries of the “planetary playing field” for humanity if we want to be sure of avoiding major human-induced environmental change on a global scale.
 planet_vulnerability.pdf | [ ] |
Studies on Reforms of Agriculture, Education and Social Systems within the Context of Enlargement and Demographic Changes in the EU
IPTS/ESTO Studies, 2002
This study deepens the analysis on the interactions between technological trends and the developments which can be expected to take place in the next decade(s) in the areas of agriculture and rural development, human capital formation and social systems. It highlights which key problems need to be addressed in the candidate countries in the light of their accession to the EU as well as how the ongoing reform process in the EU will be affected by Enlargement.
| eur_science_tech_obs.pdf | [ ] |
Analysis of mountain areas in the EU and applicant countries
The obtjective of this project is to analize the situation (economic, social, environmental aspects, etc.) in the mountain regions of the EU and the candidate countries and the impact of Community and national policies on these areas.
