Located in the south of France, along the Mediterranean coast, the Camargue is the main territorial component of the Rhone delta. This large floodplain of more than 190,000 ha includes natural habitats such as lagoons, brackish/freshwater marshes with emergent or aquatic vegetation, as well as halophilous scrubs and steppes. These ecosystems are intermingled with agro-systems dominated by rice paddies and other irrigated crop, including vineyards and fruit trees. Through a complex network of irrigation and drainage channels, 730M of cubic meters of water are pumped from the Rhone on average each year to compensate for river embankment, avoid soil salinisation, and enhance primary production (overcome summer drought). Half of this water is returned to the Rhone through drainage channels, the other half being evacuated to the main lagoon in the Camargue, the Vaccarès. This water, primarily pumped for rice farming, is also used for flooding marshes, wildfowl hunting and reed harvest, as well as for irrigation of wet meadows. Pesticides used for rice farming have been shown to affect biodiversity, but management options to reduce pesticide use (organic farming, dry sowing, winter flooding) with positive impacts on wildlife are gaining in popularity. 

Wetland ecosystems of the Camargue are important for a range of regulating ecosystem services such as climate regulation, flood mitigation, water purification and nutrient cycling. They also provide important provisioning and cultural services through agriculture, fishing, cattle grazing, wildfowl hunting and bird watching. Each habitat type has a different dependency on water management, and resilience to fluctuations in water levels and salinity. External factors influencing agricultural land use (e.g. CAP reform, global market evolution for rice or biofuels) or hydrological conditions (increased salinity in the Rhone estuary, reduced rainfall due to climate change, sea level rise) will affect the functions, biodiversity and services of these habitats, with potential tradeoffs among provisioning, regulating and cultural services. For instance, wetland management for wildfowl hunting has resulted in the imposition of hydrological conditions as opposed to natural cycles. This affects the native Mediterranean flora and fauna adapted to seasonal brackish wetlands and increases vulnerability to invasive plant species. Flooding of habitats such as rice paddies, hunting marshes and wet meadows during the warmer seasons further increases mosquito abundance, with deleterious effects on ecotourism, and alters the overall carbon-abatement capacity of wetlands in the Camargue. In addition, inadequate grazing practices can lead to severe habitat degradation when combined with unsuitable hydrological management.