---
id: people/michel-etienne
about:
  label: Michel Etienne
  description: >-
    INRA plant ecologist in Avignon who modelled Mediterranean sylvopastoral
    systems, led companion modelling work across France and edited the 2014 book
    on the approach.
  aliases:
    - Michel Étienne
  tags:
    - companion modelling
    - participatory modelling
    - rangelands
    - fire prevention
person:
  affiliation: 'INRA, Ecodevelopment Unit, Avignon'
  role: plant ecologist and modeller
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: 'Michel Etienne (JASSS author note, 2003)'
      url: 'https://www.jasss.org/6/2/5/Etienne.html'
    - title: 'Our Companion Modelling Approach (Barreteau and others, JASSS, 2003)'
      url: 'https://www.jasss.org/6/2/1.html'
    - title: >-
        Companion Modelling: A Participatory Approach to Support Sustainable
        Development (Étienne, ed., Springer and Quae, 2014)
      url: 'https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-017-8557-0'
  created: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
Michel Etienne, also written Étienne, is a plant ecologist and modeller.[^1,3] He was director of research at the Ecodevelopment Unit of INRA in Avignon, which studies how farm activities interact with environmental problems.[^1,3] By 2003 he had worked for twenty-five years on Mediterranean sylvopastoral systems, in which trees and forage are grazed by livestock. After ten years of research on those interactions he moved to building models that simulate how such systems change under different management practices, and then to decision support at the farm level and companion modelling at the scale of natural resource management.[^1]

He is one of the leaders of the ComMod group and has applied companion modelling at many sites in France, on livestock farming and fire prevention, agricultural development and biodiversity conservation, and forest management and landscape dynamics.[^3] He edited *Companion Modelling: A Participatory Approach to Support Sustainable Development* (Springer and Quae, 2014), which sets out the stance behind the approach, its methods and tools, and the role of models in it, with 27 case studies and 7 teaching tools.[^3]

He is one of the twelve signatories of the 2003 charter of [companion modelling](/communication/companion-modelling/).[^2]