• Energy Research

La place centrale des savoirs dans les choix d’action publique est remise en cause par la « mise en risque » de phénomènes climatiques et hydrologiques qui s’avèrent imprévisibles et irréversibles. C’est le cas du recul du trait de côte des falaises en Picardie. Longtemps basé sur une approche scientifique et technique dite de « recul moyen », l’État doit recomposer ses moyens d’action face à l’occurrence de risques extrêmes et brusques. Or, il ne s’agit pas seulement de changer de modalités dans l’approche technique, ni de promouvoir de nouveaux outils de prévention pour construire des stratégies de recomposition territoriale des littoraux. Le cas de l’effondrement de la falaise d’Ault illustre le besoin urgent d’intégrer dans l’action publique une pluralité de connaissances des effets du changement climatique, tant en termes de savoirs qui peuvent être alternatifs et scientifiques que de connaissances tirées de l’expérience sensible, personnelle ou esthétique. The central place of knowledge in public policy choices is being challenged by climate and hydrological phenomena that turn out to be unpredictable and irreversible. This is the case with the retreat of the coastline of the cliffs in Picardy. For a long time based on a scientific and technical approach known as “average retreat”, the national government now has to reconstitute its methods of action in the face of extreme and sudden risks. But it’s not just a question of changing the technical approach, or promoting new prevention tools to build strategies for reorganising coastal areas. The case of the collapse of the cliffs at Ault illustrates the urgent need to integrate multiple forms of knowledge about the effects of climate change into public action, both in terms of alternative and scientific knowledge and in terms of knowledge rooted in sensitive, personal, or aesthetic experience. International audience

Human welfare depends on the health of nature. Decades of ill-conceived management practices caused a decline in the quality of human life, as well as in biological and cultural diversity. Simultaneously, they increased social and ecological risks. For instance, mismanagement of urban rivers jeopardizes their ecological health and ability to provide ecosystem services. While demands for responsible urban riverscape design that fulfill both human and ecosystem needs are increasing, explicit recommendations to achieve these ambitious goals are still lacking. We present a first attempt of a conceptualization of Human–River Encounter Sites for urban rivers that targets reconciliation between humans and nature within urban river corridors. It builds upon the River Culture Concept with literature reviews and experiences from river restoration projects. We identify six tenets that are important to develop guidelines for Human–River Encounter Sites: health, safety, functionality, accessibility, collaboration, and awareness. This paper presents how these tenets can collectively help to harmonize the needs of citizens and biota, and to mitigate the current urban river crisis. This contribution feeds the debate on sustainable socio-ecological management of urban rivers and provides guidelines for the implementation of future urban river restorations and management efforts.

A key challenge of hazard risk management is finding novel ways to respond to future extremes amid increasing vulnerability. Societal transformation in the context of multi-functional protection schemes offers potential in this regard. However, the drivers and barriers of societal transformation in hazard management are poorly understood. Here we interrogate drivers and barriers of societal transformation in natural hazard management through case studies in Austria, France and Ireland focusing on attempts to integrate multi-functional protection schemes in the context of flood and avalanche hazards. We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders connected to proposed transformative strategies in the selected case studies. We find that transformative approaches have been mainly supported by local initiatives instigated by local governments, residents, or NGOs with the aim of complementing conventional hazard management policies. Our analysis shows that local actors and stakeholders often pursue initiatives to address local problems or to seize local opportunities rather than to contribute to a broader societal transformation. According to our findings, key drivers of community-based initiatives with multiple functionality and use include: (i) lack of funding, (ii) lack of legal protection or (iii) lack of space, where classical risk management measures can no longer respond to new circumstances. In contrast, key barriers relate to: (i) lack of local capacities, (ii) lack of local political support and (iii) technological challenges in the implementation phase. These insights support European regions currently working on the implementation of climate change adaptation strategies arising from natural hazards.

Many social-ecological system(SES)-based approaches have been proposed to address environmental problems. Most social-ecological frameworks developed to date, however, lack clear operational linkages between humans and nature to efficiently guide SESs toward resilience. A conceptual framework designed to be operational is therefore necessary, as well as a network of research platforms with which to apply it. We defined explicit coupling processes that can be used as leverages to pilot an SES toward sustainability. We proposed to formalize an SES as a dynamic entity composed of two coupling interfaces, i.e., adaptive management and ecosystem services, both set within a landscape context to provide an actionable framework. These interfaces describe the way various actors, including scholars, benefit from and manage complex and changing interactions between the biophysical and social templates. Understanding the key processes underlying the interaction dynamics, especially those leveraging adaptive management processes, would help identify adaptive pathways for practices and collective actions, provide a crucial knowledge base for policy makers, and foster operationality as a requisite of an SES research agenda. Using several examples, we explained why long-term social-ecological research platforms provide an ideal operational network of research infrastructures to conduct place-based action-orientated research targeting the sustainability of SESs.