Cécile Chéron-Bessou

Verified

Cécile verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Cécile verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• PhD
• Research Director at French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development

The remote sensing community benefits from new sensors and easier access to Earth Observation data to frequently released new land-cover maps. The propagation of such independent and heterogeneous products offers promising perspectives for various scientific domains and for the implementation and monitoring of land-use policies. Yet, it may also co...

Purpose Anthropogenic activities are a major driver of soil and land degradation. Due to the spatial heterogeneity of soil properties and the global nature of most value chains, the modelling of the impacts of land use on soil quality for application in life cycle assessment (LCA) requires a regionalised assessment with global coverage. This paper...

Lignocellulosic (bio)ethanol from oil palm agricultural residue was investigated regarding feedstock availability and environmental impacts while accounting for avoided biomass decay. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out at both pilot- and large-scale plants, from oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) collection until ethanol production and use...

Ce chapitre traite de deux enjeux majeurs auxquels sont confrontés les ménages ruraux en zone tropicale : préserver les ressources naturelles et assurer la sécurité alimentaire. Relever ces deux défis simultanément requiert de développer des systèmes de production efficaces, capables à la fois de garantir la sécurité alimentaire des agriculteurs et...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed at investigating the effects of both fertilization and understory vegetation management on soil health and oil palm performances. It explored a gradient of management practices, within homogeneous soil and climate conditions and historical development. The objective was to isolate and decipher the specific effects of some...

To promote greater sustainability in agriculture, development of agroecology is increasingly being invoked. What are the conditions for establishing agroecological production in tropical regions? Based upon case studies in several tropical areas, we provide here some answers to this question. We review the “pillars” (i.e. principles) and the “imple...

This chapter deals with two major issues rural households face in tropical areas: preserving natural resources and guaranteeing food security. Tackling these two challenges simultaneously may require developing profitable production systems that can both guarantee food security for farmers, while also ensuring sustainable management of natural reso...

Download the ebook for free here: https://www.quae-open.com/produit/179/9782759234677/life-cycle-assessment-of-agri-food-systems

CONTEXT Oil palm is widely cultivated in Indonesia and it is produced by various populations of smallholders. Among those, ex-plasma smallholders are characterized by the fact that they only start to manage their own plantations 5 to 10 years after those were initially planted and managed by a partner industrial company. Despite the large areas tha...

The assessment of the impacts of land-use and management on soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics is a major environmental concern, as the soil carbon cycle underpins key ecosystem services. However, assessments based on short-term SOC dynamics face methodological and experimental difficulties. Hurisso et al. (2016) proposed a method to assess SOC dyn...

Purpose Soil organic carbon (SOC) plays a key role in soil functioning and in greenhouse gas exchange with the atmosphere. Land use and land use changes can critically affect SOC. However, despite various methodological developments, there is still no scientific consensus on the best method to assess the holistic impact of land use and land use cha...

Value Chain Analysis for Development (VCA4D) is a tool funded by the European Commission / DEVCO and is implemented in partnership with Agrinatura. Agrinatura (http://agrinatura-eu.eu) is the European Alliance of Universities and Research Centers involved in agricultural research and capacity building for development.

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) is currently cultivated on 19 million ha, and palm oil represents more than one‐third of the global vegetable oil market. Addition of nitrogen (N) via legume cover crop and fertilizers is a common practice in industrial oil palm plantations, however, there is a tendency for N loss, thus contributing significantly...

In this technical report, we describe thoroughly the structure and functioning of the agri-environmental indicator IN-Palm, to assess potential N losses in oil palm plantations (Pardon et al. 2019). It includes the user instructions, an explanation of the use of fuzzy decision trees in IN-Palm, the structure and calculation of the 17 modules of t...

Palm oil mill’s co-products (empty fruit bunch – EFB and palm oil mill effluent – POME) management is a matter of concern in Indonesia. Co-composting is a promising waste management practice that would allow a reduction of environmental impact and a restitution of organic matter to the soil. This study is a part of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) pro...

The environmental sustainability of biofuel production is still a debated issue in the world bio-economy development. Therefore, different researches are undergoing to evaluate the sustainability of ethanol production in different countries. This study aimed at analyzing the environmental performance of ethanol production in Ethiopia, considering e...

The rise of palm oil as the world's most consumed vegetable oil has coincided with exponential growth in palm oil research activity. Bibliometric analysis of research outputs reveals a distinct imbalance in the type of research being undertaken, notably a disproportionate focus on biofuel and engineering topics. Recognizing the expansion of oil pal...

The rise of palm oil as the world’s most consumed vegetable oil has coincided with exponential growth in palm oil research activity. Bibliometric analysis of research outputs reveals a distinct imbalance in the type of research being undertaken, notably a disproportionate focus on biofuel and engineering topics. Recognising the expansion of oil pal...

Assessing the effect of land management on soil quality is nowadays a key environmental concern, as the soil system is linked to major ecosystem services. There is a strong methodological shortage to integrate the impact of anthropogenic pressure on the soil system within large scale environmental frameworks, such as the Life Cycle Assessment. The...

The assessment of soil quality is a scientific issue that has been widely debated in the literature for the last twenty years. We developed the Biofunctool® framework to assess soil quality based on an integrative approach that accounts for the link between the physico-chemical properties and the biological activity of soils. Biofunctool® consists...

The environmental impact of the palm oil value chain is a global concern that has been scrutinized by the scientific community. Co-composting palm oil mill by-products (empty fruit bunch – EFB and palm oil mill effluent – POME) have been advertised as an efficient way to reduce environmental footprint. Co-composting as a sub-system in the life cycl...

In the LCA framework, resources remain the most non-consensual area of protection and more specifically, no operational methods exist for biotic resources. This work provides ready-to-use characterisation factors (CF) to tackle stock depletion for global fisheries. CFs are based on FAO data, the well-used Schaefer model for fish stock dynamic, and...

We reviewed the available knowledge about measurements and modelling of N fluxes and losses in oil palm plantations.

We developed IN-Palm, a model to help managers and scientists to estimate N losses to the environment and identify best management practices.

Over the past decade, the exponential growth in the production of biomass for energy use has raised concerns as to the environmental impacts of this type of land use, as well as the potential land-use changes (LUC) associated with an extension of agricultural land areas. Determining the environmental impacts of an expanding bioenergy sector require...

The soil microbial activity is a key parameter in numerous studies aiming to assess soil quality in agricultural plots. Basal Soil Respiration (BSR) has been extensively used as an indicator of this soil microbial activity. However, available methods to measure BSR remain time-and labor-consuming and must be performed in the laboratory which may le...

Oil palm cultivation has environmental impacts, including those associated with nitrogen (N) losses. Improving management practices to optimise yield and N losses is critical. In order to identify the key management and site parameters driving yield and N losses, over a 25-year cycle, we undertook a Morris’s sensitivity analysis of the Agricultural...

Growing demand for palm oil is driven by increasing human population, income growth as well as biodiesel stimulation programs. Covering an area of over ten million ha in Indonesia, palm oil production is also one of the most important sources of crop residues while processing generates large amounts of wastewater. Cultivation and processing of this...

Palm oil is nowadays the first vegetable oil consumed worldwide. Given the world population growth and the increasing demand in fat for food and fuel, the increase in oil palm production is expected to continue. It is thus important to find ways of reducing the ecological impact of oil palm plantations at both the agroecosystem and the mill supply...

Environmental impacts are based on various cause-and-effect mechanisms that link activities to emissions into the atmosphere and, subsequently, to quantitative or qualitative changes in the state of ecosystems and available resources. Assessing these impacts for an agri-chain becomes especially complex since it requires the integration at multiple...

This chapter concludes the part 4 of this book on Agrichains and Evaluation of Sustainability by highlighting the main messages and issues to consider for future research and design of evaluation methods.

Key messages: - Several sustainability certification schemes have been developed for palm oil; however, the field impacts of these schemes remain highly uncertain. The Sustainable Palm Oil Production (SPOP) project, funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), was aimed at consolidating and deepening the scientific basis of these schemes. -...

We performed a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) of a bio-based cosmetic cream containing Refined Palm Kernel Oil (RPKO). The objective was to investigate the importance of the RPKO production within the environmental impact of the cosmetic cream. We assumed a baseline scenario with best oil palm agricultural practices in Malaysia, and th...

Quantifying the environmental impact of production systems has become a milestone for agricultural commodity chains. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a unique ISO standardized methodology for estimating the environmental impact of human activities along a commodity chain. In the last decade, LCA has become the worldwide standard for environmental pro...

Oil palm cultivation has drastically increased in the last decades and has become a key crop to meet the global vegetable oil demand, while raising environmental issues linked to deforestation, fertiliser or pesticide uses. Guidelines on best practices have been developed to limit these environmental impacts. However, there is little evidence on th...

Oil palm is the most rapidly expanding tropical perennial crop. Its cultivation raises environmental concerns, notably related to the use of nitrogen (N) fertilisers and the associated pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. While numerous and diverse models exist to estimate N losses from agriculture, very few are currently available for tropical...

Oral presentation. Conference: International Environmental Modelling and Software Society (iEMSs) 8th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software, At Toulouse, France

Oil palm cultivation area is expected to increase until at least 2050. This expansion raises environmental concerns, not only regarding land-use change and its consequences, but also concerning potential impacts of losses of nitrogen such as ammonia volatilisation, nitrous oxide emission and nitrate leaching and runoff. The prerequisite to any work...

Oil palm is the most rapidly expanding tropical perennial crop. Its cultivation raises environmental concerns, notably related to the use of nitrogen (N) fertilisers and the associated pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. While numerous and diverse models exist to estimate N losses from agriculture, very few are currently available for tropical...

Résumé Les impacts environnementaux reposent sur divers mécanismes de cause à effet reliant des activités à des émissions vers l’environnement, puis à des effets en termes de changements quantitatifs ou qualitatifs de l’état des écosystèmes et des ressources disponibles. L’évaluation de ces impacts pour une filière agricole est particulièrement com...

This paper discusses the oil palm expansion in the State of Pará, located in the Brazilian Amazon. It focuses on land use change aspects put in perspective with the sustainability criteria for biofuels of the European Renewable Energy Directive (RED). The study shows that palm oil production for energy purposes appears very promising in Brazil. In...

N2O emissions from agriculture greatly contribute to climate change. In palm plantations on mineral soils, these emissions are mostly due to fertiliser inputs. This raises environmental concerns as oil palm is the most rapidly expanding tropical perennial crop. There is hence a critical need to quantify and model N2O emissions in order to explore s...

Conference paper. 5th International Conference on Oil Palm and Environment (ICOPE), 16-18th Mar 2016, Bali, Indonesia

Oral presentation. Conference: 5th International Conference on Oil Palm and Environment (ICOPE), 16-18th Mar 2016, Bali, Indonesia

Purpose As highlighted in recent reviews, there is a need to harmonise the way life cycle assessment (LCA) of perennial crops is conducted. In most published LCA on perennial crops, the modelling of the agricultural production is based on data sets for just one productive year. This may be misleading since performance and impacts of the system may...

Nitrogen (N) losses in agroecosystems are a major environmental and economic issue. This issue is particularly pronounced in oil palm cultivation because oil palm production area is expected to increase to 12 Mha by 2050. N fertilization in oil palm plantations is mainly provided by mineral fertilizers, palm oil mill by-products, and biological fix...

As one of the most comprehensive environmental assessment methodologies, life cycle assessment enables evaluation of the environmental impacts of anthropogenic activities along a supply chain. Its implementation raises many scientific questions. In the case of tropical cropping systems, researchers are working to understand and model environmental...

La partie 4 de cet ouvrage s’attache aux instruments à disposition des chercheurs et des praticiens pour évaluer les filières agricoles et agroalimentaires en termes de contribution au développement durable. Suivant les cas, une filière peut être un excellent vecteur de développement durable ou bien un catalyseur de catastrophes humaines et écologi...

Oil palm cultivation has become emblematic of the trade-off between development and conservation that growers have to face in the context of global changes. This challenge between economic growth and environmental issues and the growing public debate regarding palm oil development and use require improving data availability to avoid ideological pos...

Palm oil represents 38% of the world plant oil production. Nitrogen losses are the main cause of pollution during the cultivation period of oil palm. We need to better estimate losses to reduce them. The main challenges that we identified for modelling are: to adapt emission factors to tropical context, to take into account important internal fluxe...

Conference: SETAC Europe 25th Annual Meeting, 3-7 May 2015 | Barcelona, Spain

Industrial tree crop plantations often enter in direct competition for land with forests. In those cases, the net result on climate is detrimental. In other cases, the possibility for tree crops to fulfil the objectives of CSA deserves a deeper investigation. This study analyses the case of natural rubber production in Thailand. The natural rubber...

Industrial tree crop plantations often enter in direct competition for land with forests. In those cases, the net result on climate is detrimental. In other cases, the possibility for tree crops to fulfil the objectives of CSA deserves a deeper investigation. This study analyses the case of natural rubber production in Thailand. The natural rubber...

Many authors have discussed the concept of soil fertility. Despite some disagreement on the exact terminology, soil fertility retrospectively appeared to focus generally on the use of soil for agriculture. It was defined some 150 years ago, while agricultural sciences mostly focused on soil physical and chemical properties. More recently, with the...

Purpose Palm oil systems generate substantial amounts of biomass residues which are, according to best agricultural practices, preferably returned back to plantation in order to maintain soil fertility. However, there are often variations in this practice. Differences in economic status and possible treatment options for biomass residues determine...

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is a non-profit association promoting sustainable palm oil through a voluntary certification scheme. Two successive science-based working groups on greenhouse gas (GHG) were active in RSPO from 2009 to 2011, with the aim of identifying ways of achieving meaningful and verifiable reductions of GHG emissi...

This contribution is an intermediate product of the ANR 1 research project, SPOP (Sustainable Palm Oil Production). SPOP project aims at providing scientific knowledge on the diverse oil palm cropping systems in Indonesia and Cameroon, and on their social, economic and environmental impacts. This knowledge should help identify best practices, adapt...

The objective of the work reported here was to reduce the uncertainty on the greenhouse gas balances of biofuels using agro-ecosystem modeling at a high resolution over the Ile-de-France region in Northern France. The emissions simulated during the feedstock production stage were input to a life-cycle assessment of candidate biofuel pathways: bioet...

Lors du Grenelle de l_environnement, l_accent a été porté dans le secteur agricole sur l_agro-écologie et la nécessité d_orienter les modes de consommation vers des produits respectueux de l_environnement. Ainsi, depuis juin 2011, une nouvelle certification volontaire a été mise en place par décret : l_agriculture à haute valeur environnementale (H...

Within the frame of the French Grenelle for the environment, in the agricultural sector, the need to orient consumers toward environmental-friendly products was emphasised. In June 2011, a new certification was hence promulgated by decree: the agriculture of high environmental value (HEV). This certification aims at harmonising all agri-environment...

Purpose Perennial crops globally provide a lot of fruit and other food products. They may also provide feedstock for bioenergy and have been, notably to this end, the subject of several LCA-based studies mostly focusing on energy and GHG balances. The purpose of this review was to investigate the relevance of LCAs on perennial crops, especially foc...

PurposePerennial crops globally provide a lot of fruit and other food products. They may also provide feedstock for bioenergy and have been, notably to this end, the subject of several LCA-based studies mostly focusing on energy and GHG balances. The purpose of this review was to investigate the relevance of LCAs on perennial crops, especially focu...

Purpose The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) is a specific example of life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to legislative measures that have far‐reaching implications for economic operators. This paper aims to analyze LCA limitations for biofuels based on RED from an environmental accounting perspective. Design/methodology/approach LCA limitations...

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is a non-profit association promoting sustainable palm oil through a voluntary certification scheme. Two successive science-based working groups on greenhouse gas (GHG) were active in RSPO from 2009 to 2011, with the aim of identifying ways of achieving meaningful and verifiable reductions of GHG emissi...

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent fertilizer-derived greenhouse gas which plays a predominant role in the life-cycle assessment of biofuels. The use of generic emissions factors to estimate its emissions in such context has been widely criticized because of its lack of accuracy, since N2O emissions are highly dependent on local soil and climate condi...

Informed decisions on 'agricultural transformation', the rapidly changing diversity of agricultural holdings, could play a decisive role in society's response to several global challenges, including food security and environmental sustainability. Improved stakeholder access to information on the social, economic and environmental impacts of transfo...

Purpose The results of published Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of biofuels are characterized by a large variability, arising from the diversity of both biofuel chains and the methodologies used to estimate inventory data. Here, we suggest that the best option to maximize the accuracy of biofuel LCA is to produce local results taking into account th...

Whereas life cycle assessment (LCA) is more and more used for assessing the environmental load of waste management systems and of biomass production and valorization systems, various scientific issues are still to be dealt with. The purpose of this paper is to enlighten these scientific issues and to describe the current attempt to overcome them. T...

La dernière décennie a vu l’analyse du cycle de vie (ACV) s’imposer comme cadre méthodologique de référence pour l’évaluation quantitative des impacts environnementaux d’un produit ou d’un système de production. Bien que déjà largement utilisés dans les sphères économiques (éco-conception, responsabilité sociale des entreprises) et politiques (éco-...

Biofuels are fuels produced from biomass, mostly in liquid form, within a time frame sufficiently short to consider that their feedstock (biomass) can be renewed, contrarily to fossil fuels. This paper reviews the current and future biofuel technologies, and their development impacts (including on the climate) within given policy and economic frame...