AtlantECO Deliverable - D08.4 - Report on socio- economic predictions

Abstract

The Work Package 8 (WP8) of the AtlantECO project focuses on anticipating future changes in basin-scale Atlantic ecosystem services in response to environmental and socio-economic drivers. In alignment with AtlantECO's Objective 4, WP8 aims to deliver a systemic approach to support science-informed decision-making through scenario development, predictive modeling, and integrated analyses of ecosystem health and services. WP8 combines climate projections, biogeochemical models, and socio-economic analysis to evaluate risks of tipping points, regime shifts, and changes in provisioning, supporting, and regulating services such as carbon sequestration, nutrient recycling, and primary production. A significant portion of the results was already achieved prior to the official deadline and presented in previous interim reports an deliverables. However, as this is the final report, these results will be revisited and summarized in the relevant sections to ensure completeness and coherence. WP8 is structured around four main deliverables, each addressing a critical aspect of the prediction and evaluation of ecosystem services under future climate and socio-economic scenarios. Here we present the deliverable D8.4 : Report on socio-economic predictions. This report integrates economic and social projections into the ecosystem services framework. It includes macro-economic modeling using the ICES framework to simulate future trajectories of provisioning services (notably fisheries) and assesses socio-cultural values through participatory mapping and surveys. The combined economic and cultural valuation will provide a comprehensive picture of future ecosystem service trade-offs. An ancillary work proposes projections of microplastic production and diffusion in the Atlantic linked to social economic drivers of development.