Modelling stakeholder perceptions to assess Green Infrastructures potential in agriculture through fuzzy logic: A tool for participatory governance

Solutions like Green Infrastructures can restore and maintain key regulative ecosystem services capable of mitigating disaster risk and contributing to climate change adaptation. Given the vulnerabilities that affect agriculture and its role in national economies, GI can play an important role in managing trade-offs between conflicting ecosystem services. However, their use is still lagging behind, and socio-economic dynamics in their uptake in the agricultural sector are partially disregarded. The uncertainty involved in the modelling of ecological processes can be reduced through the use of participatory processes and the involvement of relevant stakeholders to sustain decision-making processes. This article intends to assess stakeholders' perceptions on the implementation of Green Infrastructures in agriculture by capturing critical barriers and facilitators. The implementation of such Green Infrastructures policies is associated to different climate change trends in order to understand the effect of different scenarios on rural development. The study uses fuzzy logic to elicit the stakeholders' needs. The key results show that when there is uncertainty in the state of climate change trends, it is always more efficient to adopt progressive policies investing in the development and diffusion of Green Infrastructures.

Automated summary

Green Infrastructures can restore and maintain key ecosystem services, mitigate disaster risk, and contribute to climate change adaptation. However, their use in agriculture is still behind and socio-economic dynamics play a role in their uptake.