The ‘Management of Renewable Resources and Environment’ research unit (French acronym: Green) was created at CIRAD in 1994 to address, in a systemic and interdisciplinary way, the issue of the co-viability of ecosystems and the livelihoods they support (Weber, 1995), as well as to explore the role of ecosystems and the environment as a factor in the viability of development. The interactions between ecological dynamics and social dynamics have been from the beginning an object of study. The aim at that time was to understand how these interactions influence collective decision-making processes and ways of appropriating natural resources in the context of sustainable development.

The work done in the research unit since its founding has been based on constructing an interdisciplinary approach to the object of study, with an important role accorded to modelling as a vector of exchange and integration of view points between disciplines. This work has involved a growing number of researchers in the biotechnology and social sciences and has contributed in orienting our research to support collective learning and action processes.

Although the general objective of our research has remained the same, as the work of the unit progressed, and especially since its institution as an Internal Research Unit (RU) in 2005, we have defined new lines of. This reformulation was also largely influenced by the work carried out as part of external evaluations in 2004, 2010 and 2014.

Since 2010, the main focus of the unit has shifted from the management of renewable natural resources to the management of social and ecological systems (SES).