[copie] CITÉ

The ‘CITÉ’ project (Accounting, Infrastructures, Landscape, Ecosystem) aims to deploy the Ecosystem-Centred Accounting Framework in the Moselle region, involving three transport and energy infrastructure management companies: RTE, VNF and SNCF Réseau. This research project, which includes a thesis, is supported by the Ecological Accounting Chair (hosted by the AgroParisTech Foundation) and the AScA research consultancy.

Ecosystem-centred accounting (ECA) is a field of management science concerned with the collective management of an ecosystem, on which stakeholders exert various pressures. The challenge is to build a system of accounts based on the ecological concerns of the area, with a view to coordinating the strategic actions of companies to achieve good ecological status for the ecosystem in question. On the one hand, these accounts can provide a forum for distributing the resources committed to improving the ecological quality of the ecosystem among the companies in the area; on the other, they can be used to report on the ecological performance of each company to the funding bodies. The CITÉ project will test two hypotheses:
- H1: Transport and energy infrastructures transform the ecosystems they cross. Although these facilities sometimes considerably modify the environments, the question of improving the ecological quality of ecosystems is of interest to infrastructure management companies and local organisations that are concerned about the ecological state of their territory.
- H2: A new form of "ecosystem-centred" accounting is needed to provide the tools for a deliberative forum around these ecosystemic issues, enabling responsibilities to be recognised, the common environmental issues (ecological, landscape, living environment) to be chosen and analysed, the changes and effects of the actions taken to be measured, and accountability for the values created, the efforts made, etc., to be established.

A landscape analysis will be carried out during the first year, both to identify the ecological concerns of the area and to understand the interplay between the players involved in addressing these ecological concerns. The aim is both to map the ecological issues facing the area and to understand the links between transport infrastructure and biodiversity. The scope of the ecosystem-centred accounting to be designed will be defined at the end of this year.
The second year will be devoted to the construction of accounts, both biophysical and monetary, to give an account of the state of ecological concerns and the pressures exerted on them, and to identify the resources committed by companies to improving the ecosystem. This work will require a link to be made between companies' accounting systems and management in the field. A collective forum for debate will be organised around the accounts so that the partner companies can take ownership of them and decide on the strategic use of these accounts.

During the third year, these collective accounts will be scaled up in order to develop contributory actions by stakeholders to improve the ecological performance of management. The conditions for replicability of this approach will also be examined.