Cultural ecosystem services and nature tourism. Case study in some rural areas in France
Résumé
In France, like other occidental countries, we can observe a “greening” of the society and tourism is particularly concerned. Tourists are especially in search of nature. But what they search? What kind of nature? We took an interest in these questions in the framework of a research program about nature tourism in rural areas of the French Region Centre-Val de Loire. We consider nature in the broad sense, including agrosystems as sylvosystems, because all can offer ecosystem services (ES) and they are regarded like this by tourists. Here three case studies will be given as examples: the forest park of a famous castle (Chambord), a vacation village, which is located in a forest and is oriented towards nature, and a vineyard, where tourism is growing. The use of ES concept allows to increase knowledge about nature tourism and question the reasons of the growing importance of this kind of tourism. The majority of tourists are city dwellers and being in the nature provides them with well-being (quiet, nice landscape, etc.). It can also be an opportunity to learn about nature. This kind of tourism is thus a matter for cultural ES. But we have to note that most of tourists prefer a managed nature and the tourism growing is paralleled with planning, especially infrastructures building. Consequently, only a part of the territory, the managed one, is dedicated to tourism. It is particularly true for protected areas, like the forest park of Chambord, where the other part is saved for nature preservation. But it is more generally necessary to avoid use conflicts, because these ecosystems also provide other users with other ES, which can be in contradiction with tourism (especially provisioning services). Thus, cultural ES localization cannot be based only on land use map and their knowledge implies to add other information, not only about ecosystems. The task is complex and the use of models is compromised.