COS 68-6 - The impact of agri-environmental stakeholders’ cognitive framings on biodiversity of Quebec

Abstract: In the province of Quebec, Canada, there are several environmental policies aiming to protect biodiversity in agricultural areas. Whether it is by preserving some species or by improving waterways and soil quality, agricultural environments are required to provide ecosystem services beyond producing food. Moreover, following the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15), the province's authorities have made a stronger commitment to meet their biodiversity conservation targets, which adds further complexities for land use management in agricultural areas.

In order to meet such goals, several agri-environmental stakeholders are increasingly being called upon to be involved with biodiversity management. From national to local scales, stakeholders interact through so-called social interdependencies, which are profoundly associated with ecosystem services provision and key social cognitive framing elements. This research, rooted in a socio-ecological logic, will seek to characterize the ways in which cognitive framings of stakeholders will influence the effectiveness of public actions taken for biodiversity protection in agricultural environments in Quebec.

Through our qualitative approach, we aim to study how stakeholders’ perceptions of biodiversity impacts social interdependencies and ecosystem services outcomes in agricultural areas of Quebec. We conducted individual semi-structured interviews, surveys and individual conceptual mapping with 30 previously identified key stakeholders. By triangulating results from our discourse and content analyses, we anticipate a detailed matrix of social interdependencies associated with their respective valued ecosystem services – also identified by analysis.

As for our main findings, we show that social interdependencies require a meaningful amount of resources to maintain and to practically put public actions into place. As for that matter, it is brought up to our attention during interviews that financial resources and expertise are frequently considered insufficient or managed inappropriately for adequate biodiversity management. We also notice that there are significantly different understandings of the biodiversity concept between stakeholders that strictly operate in agriculture and the ones that work in environmental management. Both parties generally want to develop social interdependencies with each other, but they sometimes face difficulties trying to effectively communicate their respective intentions and knowledges.

Essentially, this study suggest that cognitive framing significantly influences the type of actions and social interdependencies stakeholders will maintain to benefit from what they consider valuable ecosystem services. In other words, perceptions of biodiversity considerably impacts ecosystem services management. In conclusion, the overall biodiversity quality in agricultural environments of Quebec is deeply connected with how it is being perceived by agri-environmental stakeholders.