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While medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) are subject to an increasing interest and a growing demand, this paper focuses on MAP farmer-gatherers’ work. We adopt a crossing perspective between metropolitan France and the ultramarine territory of French Guiana. Based on surveys among MAP farmer-gatherers and related associations and on a good understanding of the socio-economic and institutional context, this paper explores through a comparative approach, the specificity of MAP farmer-gatherers’ job and the professionalization process in which they are engaged.

In this paper, we focus on community energy projects and try to characterize their economic activity from the perspective of the ecological, economic and social transition. We combine the literature about community energy with the polanyian concepts of embeddedness, substantive and plural economy, in order to scrutinize five citizen-based projects producing renewable energy, based in the Occitany Region in France. The paper discusses the political and ecological embeddedness of their economic activity, and defines a logic of « reticular autarky ».

Universities generate important flows of commuting and transport represent for them a core challenges for their attractiveness and their ecological footprint. This paper addresses the case of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. It analyses the mobility practices of students and staff (through a series of 13 annual surveys) and the main determinants that explain the use of the various means of transport. It then identifies four types of measures : the development of the transport supply, mobility management, planning and digitalization. On the whole the paper adds new knowledge to the issue of mobility on university campuses and the levers to make them into sustainable communities.

Nature in the city is a significant asset for cities’ adaptation to climate change and contributes to the quality of life of people in many ways. Its contribution, predominantly positive but also negative, can be represented by ecosystem services and disservices. In this paper, we question the input of consideration, mapping and communication on ES in creating a common language among stakeholders with different background and practices, and to make nature more visible in urban planning decisions. The question is addressed qualitatively through stakeholders’ interviews. The results show the potential added value of se as a tool for acculturation, territorial dialogue and evaluation in favour of the conservation and development of nature in the city.

Analyzing practices that re-localize food and make food chains more sustainable in the context of three alternative food networks (AFN) in Brussels, this paper shows that these practices can be of huge diversity, in terms of models as well as in terms of intensity. Through comparative analysis of the three cases, it shows that the questions of re-localize and make food systems more sustainable can lead to different strategies while the general objective of sustainability is formally shared and collectively constructed. It illustrates that AFNs projects’ are leading the main choices but that no strategy makes the difference regarding the effects on direct stakeholders in each AFN. As conclusion, the paper, argues to consider complementarity between AFNs practices more than choosing which one is the best/more sustainable.

This special issue entitled « Technical objects at the prism of hydrosocial cycle : new theoretical and empirical approaches » presents new insights concerning water-society relations in social sciences. It is characterized by interdisciplinary approaches and engages with two main theoretical frameworks : science and technology studies and political ecology. Both are indeed mobilized in order to deepen the analysis of the dialectical relation between technical objects and hydrosocial systems, by using the concept of hydrosocial cycle. Our aim is to explain how « infrastructure » and « apparatus » forge and transform water-society interrelations, reshape them and modify their functioning. But also how the hydrosocial cycle, in return, sets out particular forms of infrastructure and apparatus. This paper firstly introduces the theoretical and epistemological debates linked to this special issue. And then it presents the thirteen papers gathered in this special issue, which, based on empirical studies, offer different uses of hydrosocial cycle approach to investigate water/society dialectical relations.

This paper introduce the hypothesis that landscape is the principle of a new kind of governance, radically different from the prescriptive, voluntaristic and active way of usual ways of rulling and managing territories. More than a territorial project, Landscape governance should arouse critical and integratives (meta)projects. The paper deals with a research about the way great transport infrastructures of Likoto Eurometropolis have little by little generate aroud them non planned living spaces, that I call « urban plains ». I will show how those plains are more and more visibles, and perhaps become today a considered landscape, defended and appreciated by those who live in.

The largest ongoing river training project in Switzerland, the so-called Third Correction of the Rhone in the Valais, builds on nature-based solutions (river enlargements and renaturation) while official documents and discourses also refer to an ill-defined notion of “sustainable security” and the goal of controlling floods. Drawing on qualitative data from stakeholder interviews and analysis of official documents, this paper examines the concept of sustainable security, as it is applied to the river project in terms of a balance between security and environmental concerns, the relationship between the three pillars of sustainability, and the opportunities of the population to debate the spatial development of the Rhone Valley. We argue that legal provisions, the dominance of security concerns and technocratic framings of the project foreclose more substantive political debate on the sustainable future of the hydrosocial territory of the Rhone Valley.

How does environmental public action govern the heterogeneous temporalities of the social and natural worlds? To contribute answering this question, this paper critically studies the policies deployed to govern water scarcity in South-western France for more than thirty years. This paper shows the ambiguity associated to the construction of an environmental reference state for rivers corresponding to management threshold based on a modeled representation of rivers pristine state. To do so, this paper analyses the manner actors involved in the design and implementation of public policies try to render planning and crisis management consistent, thanks to common indicators. This paper discusses the manner actors create new rooms for maneuver by negotiating modeling methods and, by doing so, disarm environmental concerns.

This paper analyses how changes in pumping modes of groundwater reveal social and territorial transformations within an agricultural landscape. Our case study is the Saïss plain in the North of Morocco, where irrigated agriculture is mostly based on groundwater. The paper shows how farmers switched from the use of groundwater from the shallow phreatic aquifer to the deep captive Liassic aquifer, as farmers turned from wells to tube-wells. We analyse the drivers of this change, both in terms of groundwater pumping practices and in the representations that actors associate with these practices. We analyze the cognitive bases and value registers that are linked to this change. As a consequence, two “social worlds” emerged, a “world of scarcity” and a “world of abundance”, which are not compartmentalized and operate in a form of hybridity and which reveal territorialities necessarily subservient to the temporalities that punctuate the construction of the social worlds of the hidden waters of the Saïss.

This paper is based on the findings of a research project dealing landscape heritage of the Loire valley (France). We question the position of the scientist facing what we’re calling here a ‘latent’ heritage. The first part of the paper provides a geo-historical contextualisation of the hydraulic works (groynes) intended to improve navigation (channeling). We focus on identifying and analyzing time references used over the different periods : before, during and after the initial development of the groynes and the channel. Then, we present the results of a survey work with local residents demonstrating their weak knowledge of this history by pointing out the paradoxes of their social representations of these objects. The perspective of a future controversy, we defend a position of research "based on landscape analysis" to deal with heritage and participation issues in order to debate the temporalities at work in the restoration policy of the Loire River.

This article is based on the observation that issues relating to drinking water access are often disconnected from those relating to water resource governance, both in academic circles (particularly in economics and management) and within institutions (ministries, donors, NGOs). The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between these issues, based on the interpretation of a "conflict of disconnection" in Indonesia. This conflict reflects both a disconnection between representations and perceptions of water(s) that are not shared by actors (water as a resource, a public good, commodity, right, common, etc.), and a disconnection between resource and service from the point of view of governance and coordination rules. Based on this conflict, a framework for analyzing articulation is proposed based on four components : modes of coordination between actors, rules of coordination, scales and socio-technical devices. The identification of a plurality of qualifications and classifications of water, alongside underlying actors' representations and strategies, makes it possible to identify power relationships within a territory. This cross-cutting approach is seen as structuring our analysis. The article provides an original perspective for identifying the conditions of change for water governance that integrates sustainability issues in the global South.

An important evolution has occurred in local water management since 2014 with the so-called Gemapi reform (management of aquatic environments and flood prevention) and its deployment at the local level. This reform upsets the balance between institutions and redistributes the cards between the various actors involved in this management, especially between the inter-municipalities and the watershed institutions. The objective of this paper is to better understand the modalities, the scope and the meaning of these reconfigurations, based on a case study of the Montpellier area. To do this, it proposes to analyze how the Gemapi reform was implemented, by placing this process in a specific local context and management trajectory. Two main lessons emerge: a lack of clarification of roles; a trend towards the affirmation of inter-municipalities and the weakening of watershed institutions, some of the implications of which we will mention.

This paper presents a research on the capacity of planning to integrate new forms of mobily and innovation in transportation modes. From the examples of carpolling, carsharing (car clubs), bike-sharing and demand responsive systems, this paper tempt to understand how theses innovated transportation modes are considered in french public policy and especially in urban planning documents. The final aim is to improve the planning inscription of these news transportation modes in order to respond to spatial and environmental challenges and contribute to rethinking the planning.

This paper is the introduction to the special section « Combating climate change and controlling energy demand ». In december 2015 and july 2016 the journal Développement Durable & Territoires published a special section addressing climate change adaptation issues. In this special section, we focus on climate change mitigation, dealing with politics, programs and instruments. The aim is to reduce greenhouse gases, through multi-level actions: reducing the use of fossil energy sources, developping renewable energies, efficiency and energy sobriety. The papers go beyond the technical dimension and address interelations between technical devices, socio-economic dynamics and actors’ practices. Energy provision issues allow us to tackle teritorial contexts in the North and in the South, to consider different geographic scales and to observe interactions between energy politics and urban and spatial planing.

Most of the time, pollutions are perceived as « already there » phenomena waiting to be established. On the contrary, this paper explains that pollutions are the result of a qualification process embracing both human and non-human entities involved in a given situation. Starting from the observation of dead fishes in a well-known river – la Loue, this paper analyses the inquiries led by fishermen, scientists and authorities aiming at solving problematic situations. In the search for solutions, the various stakeholders refer to different type of knowledge and to different social worlds in which rivers bear different meaning.

The Covid appeared as a catalyst for emerging and pre-existing phenomena, a revealer of inequalities and a generator of new dynamics within territories. Research in humanities and social sciences has echoed these global and local issues. By focusing on French-language publications between 2020 and 2022, this paper first identifies a trend of the observed facts, before looking at the specific contribution of human and social science approaches dedicated to the Covid period, as well as the evolution of the issues addressed. The final section puts the articles published in this special issue of the DD & T journal devoted to Covid at the territorial scale into perspective in contemporary scientific production.

Citizen energy cooperatives are significant local experiments in ecological transition in Europe. They allow us to understand how social alternatives can be embodied in concrete territorial projects and raise the question of the viability of these experiments, characterized by economic conditions, environmental justification and a renewed relationship to the individualization of energy systems. The issues of viability are therefore studied in their triple economic, ecological and systemic dimensions. Using the social transactions paradigm, we are able to understand the practical compromises that take place at the territorial level and relativize the so-called major divisions between industrial and centralized energy systems and citizen and decentralized systems. From an empirical point of view, this paper is based on the sociological study of photovoltaic and wind energy cooperatives conducted between 2019 and 2021 in the Upper Rhine region, between France, Germany and Switzerland.

This paper presents an experiment involving the community of Lac-Megantic (Québec, Canada), academic actors from different fields (architecture, urban planning, geography, arts), as well as students. This exercise takes place within the post-disaster context of the 2013 rail disaster, without a common project defined upstream. The chosen approach combines transdisciplinary, cognitive and spatial dimensions of the transition experiment. It evolves over time in a series of opportunities, and is both experimental and experiential. We show how transitional and transformational values, associated with the living environment and its resources, are central in the reflection of the Megantic community and student future professional practices.

This paper studies the impact of the health crisis on the spatial behavior of consumers during the first days of the containment. If, usually, shopping mobilities are often coupled with other mobilities (professional or extra-professional trips), the context of a generalized teleworking, of administrative shutdowns and of most of our social activities being put on hold, has disrupted the consumption habits of everyone. From the results of a questionnaire survey, we propose profiles of consumption and adaptation to the health context. These profiles will then allow us to identify the strategies used by consumers to obtain supplies during the first week of confinement, particularly with regard to their location and their concern about the epidemic situation.

This paper gives an overview of the contribution of institutional economics to the analysis of payments for environmental services (PES) in the recent scientific literature. This work is based on the review of a selection of papers that appeared to us as the most significant dealing with this topic. Three main analytical themes were identified : the conceptualization of PSE, architecture and governance of PES mechanisms and the understanding of their impact. Our analysis shows that different theoretical approaches from institutional economics coexist, sometimes within the same analytical framework. This leads us to discuss the complementarities and potential contradictions inherent to the epistemological pluralism.

The paper starts with the wide variability of nonpoint water nitrogenous pollution generated by agriculture. This variability depends especially on climate, soil types and farming systems. Our interdisciplinary researches, carried out on two different sites in France, show that space and time heterogeneity influence farm practices to be implemented in order to reduce pollution at the standard level. Hence the most cost-effective farm practices are different from one place to another, depending on local characteristics. Therefore this result emphasises the potential efficiency of spatially targeted policies. Theoretically, such policies are considered optimal, since economic agents tune their efforts according to the sensitivity of the milieu where they operate. But, according to empirical analyses, this advantage is counteracted by a high cost of implementation, monitoring and enforcement. In order to maintain the advantage of site-specific policies versus uniform policies, the former have to be implemented at an optimal level of space. This level should at least allow for a trade-off between lower expenses due to an appropriate tuning to the local conditions and heavier costs of decentralised measures. This paper deals with this specific question regarding territorialized policies. It is based on a study of the efficiency of differentiating the way this pollution is regulated, focussed on assessing the importance of spatial variability in physical parameters and in site-specific policies' costs.

The aim of this paper is to indicate new research tracks to be explored in the field of economy of functionality. The observation of the implementation of economy of functionality shows that it is not possible to consider it as a sustainable development strategy per se. Questions are entire concerning its potential, in order to incent companies to adopt a more systematic approach in eco-design, as well as in taking into account sustainable aspects at a local level. In order to progress, the paper proposes a new typology of the economy of functionality, from which it is possible to reflect to this economic model through both eco-design and local questions of development.

Territorial ecology is quite a new field of research, especially in France. It first of all aims at analysing, and even transforming territorial metabolism, on the basis of both the natural and social process that impact this metabolism. Thanks to several case studies at the regional and département scale, the paper illustrates the contribution of bulk material balances to the understanding of territorial metabolism; studies the main material flows and identifies the three main types of materials involved: construction minerals (the consumption of witch is linked to urban sprawl process), agricultural and food products, fossil fuels. The paper also makes some suggestions in terms of pathways to dematerialisation, and proposes further research developments.

This paper analyses the situation of sustainable development in a European Union that is undergoing a severe economic crisis since 2008. First it describes the gap between the challenges put to the forefront in sustainable development discourses on the one side and the causes of this crisis on the other. In addition, the stress of public budgets under the crisis influence weakens the support for ecological and energy transitions, at a time when climate policies are already suffering of difficulties of their own. However, and this is examined in the second part of the paper, sustainable development objectives continue to be affirmed in European policy texts, including references to environmental limits to protect, and long term transition goals. In the third part we scrutinize the place of economic approaches in these policies. An ambiguity is shown between on the one side the preeminence of economic short term justifications for policy measures, and on the other side the idea that the stagnation of economic indicators could also sustain alternative indicators of well-being, indicators that have been promoted within sustainable development goals. We conclude by launching some ideas about the articulation of critics on ecological and economic failures.

Groundwater has become indispensable for agriculture in semi-arid countries and water resources are intensively exploited. Invisible for a long time, the increased physical, social, economic, territorial, and institutional visibility of groundwater is the result of a historical construction which we examine in this paper. In the case of Morocco, its visibility is linked to the strong irrigation development, fostered by the State. In connection with this, a problem of overexploitation of groundwater is now defined and put forward by the State. Despite discourses promoting the preservation of these resources, the adopted solutions reflect the historical objectives of hydraulic and agricultural policies. The current situation of groundwater overexploitation is currently redefined as a problem of a lack of water resources, justifying the implementation of new infrastructure aimed at increasing the global supply of water resources.

Jobs requiring skills which integrate some dimensions of sustainable development are increasingly numerous, even if their description is not always clear. This paper proposes primarily to identify newly-created jobs from traditional jobs integrating new issues in their description. The jobs offered to economists clearly belong to the second category. Then, based on an experiment carried out at Grenoble University, this paper aims at stressing the need for training including on the one hand, courses “about sustainable development” and on the other, proficiency in using some transversal tools of economics and management, such as organisational change management. This proficiency is indeed imposed by the large variety of the professional positions on offer in this field.

The French translation, “développement durable”, of the English expression, “sustainable development”, defines a mode of development intended to meet the needs of the present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This definition appears to us to be very biased. The objective of this paper is to provide the point of view of marine ecologists on the concept of sustainable development. In this paper, we explore in succession: the authors’ own definition compared with the one used in the social sciences, the identification of the coastal seas, their problems, and risks and stakes that confront them, and the requirements for a sustainable development of the coastal marine ecosystems. In conclusion, we highlight the difficulties encountered in meeting the requirements of sustainable development at sea, due to insufficient knowledge and the very relative interest given the sea by the French political authorities and institutional stakeholders.

The student housing sector has faced major challenges. On the one hand, it requires constructing housing that is environmentally friendly. On the other hand, there is a need to promptly respond to the needs and demands of student housing. The A’Docks hall of residence, built in 2010 from shipping containers, was particularly denounced in the media. This paper shows the results of a survey, using mixed-methodology, conducted for the student residents to understand the effects of their energy consumption behaviours and their recycling habits on their residential quality of life. The results show a heightened level of ecological appreciation and diverse eco-responsible practices but these are limited by constraints in housing construction and issues tied to the residence’s management.

While sustainable development has grown inescapable, environmental actors are to produce token of their “sustainability”. This paper analyses how a major actor in the conservation of sites of natural interest in France – namely the Conservatoire du Littoral (CEL) – organises its own intervention in the sustainable development of territories. What visions of the territories and of their socio-economy development does it bring? How does it bridge its environmental action with the sustainable development utopia? Based on several case studies launched by the CEL itself in 2007, the present paper analyses different types of governance and their associated visions of sustainable development. The paper concludes on what are the policy implications of such statements for the CEL.

This paper proposes a land-use conflicts analysis in terms of proximity. The first part of the paper presents the results of empirical studies on land-use and neighbourhood conflicts in the French countryside. Such study cases permit to underline the major part plays by the geographic proximity in the emergence of land use conflicts. The second part of the paper is devoted to the exploration and the characterisation of the geographic proximity "polemogene" properties. These latter are balanced with the virtues of organised proximity that may favoured the emergence of negotiated solutions to the conflicts. In the third part of the paper, an analysis chart that combines spatial and organisational dimensions of proximity is proposed. With such an analytical framework it is possible to identify the different types of land use and neighbourhood conflicts and to qualify some of their cooperative issues.

politique de l’eau, gestion de la demande, transferts d’eau inter-bassins, protection de l’environnement, aménagement du territoire, afrique du sud This paper questions the sustainability of the post-apartheid water policy in South Africa. Even if they were partly successful in the process of taking into account environmental problems and providing basic water services to previously disadvantaged communities, these policies have raised new problems. This paper shows that the implementation of the environmental Reserve and the water demand management policy have paradoxically accelerated the competition between regions for the access to water resources, and only temporarily stopped the building of huge dams and inter-basin transfers. One major reason is the controversial status of the environment in South Africa, deeply disturbed by the apartheid regime, and still politically and socially problematic.

The implementation of sustainable development policies on a global scale should icrease the coherence of the management of environmental and labour resources in the various countries. This paper aims at explaining the consequences of the different forms of management and organisation implemented recently. It compares two indicators, poverty rates (and decent labour) and the ecological footprint, in order to suggest policies that should be led in OECD countries to achieve sustainable development. Several scenarios are identified, from the countries that show a high poverty rate and a strong environmental print to other countries that are more concerned by both environmental and labour resources. This paper attempts to present the features that can explain the variety of configurations.

New collectives are identified in the short food supply chains. Their goal is to organize local products supply at a territorial scale. We consider them new because they do not lie on previous social capital and they imply new actors to collaborate with. The logistical function is also more central. This ambitious challenge addresses a cooperation problem and demands new governance systems. Considering such challenges, this paper aims at questioning the robustness of the cooperation mechanisms of these new collectives. We consider then that the cooperation robustness insures the sustainability of the collective actions such as its territorial stake. Our approach involves studying three logistical collectives from a Commons perspective and using two analysis frameworks. The first one evaluates their cooperation level, the second one identifies institutional variables of the cooperation. Finally, we discuss territorial actors’ contribution to the production of collective action and their eventual drivers.

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which ecosystem services maps can improve land-use planning decisions by strengthening the consideration of environmental issues. The methodology used is based on an experimental workshop simulating a participatory decision-making process for planning choices by a panel of territorial actors. The protocol of the workshop consists in comparing the choices of location of new areas to be urbanized based firstly on a fine land cover map and secondly, by using a sample of ecosystem services maps. The results show the participants’ interest in having ecosystem service maps for planning decision making. According to them, they bring an added value in terms of discovery, coherence, efficiency and acceptability of multifunctional space management practices. However, the operational actors of territorial engineering still make very little use of these maps derived from remote sensing and participatory workshops.

Since early 2000’s, the inhabitants of Lyon (France) are increasingly involved in city greening with community and street gardening. Public authorities support and supervise this involvement through charters and financial assistance. Yet, to put together an application in order to be allowed to make public space greener takes time and requires some administrative ease. Hence this paper examining the location of inhabitants’ initiatives regarding to socio-economic inequalities previously existing in the city. We argue that participatory urban greening generates environmental injustice in the city. The legal frame set by the municipality acts as a social filter, populations unfamiliar with its mechanics are set aside. It is only by the action of intermediary associative actors that they can engage in participatory urban greening with community gardening. However, street gardening remains a privileged leisure.

Place is not at first sight an economic concept; mainstream spatial economics remains largely unconcerned by Place. Economics has taken an interest in it in the last twenty years. This paper deals with the role of place in economic analysis, and its relationship with the concepts of heritage and identity. Elaborated by heterodoxy and institutionalism in economics, it has been sometimes criticised by economists belonging to these very persuasions. We sustain that only qualifications processes of goods and assets in production and consumption give it an endogenous status as a marker of a quality characteristic. Actually qualification processes implies references to heritage and identity. The building of a territorial identity requires the collective action of place-specific groups who set up the heritage character of some exclusive resources. This largely questions the approach of a given heritage and identity.

Coastal development, combined with the intrinsic mobility of coasts and the context of climate change, tends to increase the vulnerability of coastal territories. This article proposes, on one hand, a renewed interdisciplinary approach to the concept of vulnerability allowing to overcome the nature/society dichotomy. On the other hand, the paper presents an inter-sectoral researchers-managers approach to build a series of indicators to monitor the four components of systemic vulnerability (hazards, stakes, management and representations). These indicators lay the ground for an integrated observatory, source of data for research as well as to inform decisions regarding the adaptation of coastal territories.

How can we write the history of the Galermi aqueduct (Syracuse, Italy) from ancient times to the present day? This paper intends to report the first results of an interdisciplinary collective research program by emphasizing the different periods of the Galermi water: the aim is to identify the challenges and the so-called hydrosocial relations of this object from its technical, social and political history. What technical readings and representations of the hydraulic structure could be proposed over the ages? What control did this technical work undergo? By whom? Why? What social dynamics and actors can be identified and analyzed? What future and possible conservation can be suggested and set up for the sustainability of a monument that dates back more than 2,000 years? From Greeks and Romans to today’s policymakers, between influence and power, planning of land and Heritage, the reader is encouraged to discover this long underground aqueduct whose uses and purposes have been adapted through the ages: potable-water supply of the ancient and modern town of Syracuse, hydraulic energy for water mills during the 16th-19th centuries, hydraulic power station in the 20th century, irrigation since the 19th century.

This paper describes a landscape mediation process, led in a marsh area (Marais poitevin, France), a territory known for long term environmental controversies. One of his emblematic site (Marais mouillé) is going to be strongly affected under the influence of a pathology of the common Ash tree (Chalara fraxinea). To visualize the mediation process, an experimental representation is suggested from the combination of several dimensions (chronological, sensitive and methodological), in the objective to propose a reflexive approach, but also defining a system of tracks which would allow a future evaluation. The relation between landscape project, mediation and environmental controversy makes the object of a final development to discuss process results.

The use of indicators transforms the design and the implementation of evaluative practices at the heart of territorial policies. Evaluation is increasingly focusing on the measurement of impacts. But the latter diverge from pluralistic forms of evaluation which are characterized by a comprehensive perspective including numbers and letters. This paper questions each of these ways of evaluating.

The article analyses urban projects and governance of urban planning in a fast growingurban community (Grand Narbonne, Aude, France), focusing on the approach of the local stakeholders, between interest and distrust, about landscape considered as a dimension of the urban project and as a tool for collective thinking about urban planning. Trying to overcome what appears to be a sort of consensus about the importance of the landscape dimension due to the European Landscape Convention and to the evolution of the French legislative framework, the paper tries to highlight the processes of emergence and diffusion of a collective “culture of landscape” applied to urban planning. The part played in these processes by the regional natural park of the “Narbonnaise en Mediterranée” is thoroughly analysed, as well as the limits of its actions. The study also takes into account the strengthening of the intercommunal institutions, which broadens the local system of governance.

Baseline landscapes play a part in the landscape governance. On the Mont Lozere, France, the institutions aim to preserve open landscapes, which are considered as baseline landscapes. In this paper, we analyse how the open landscape dynamics due to the evolution of farming practices impact the stakeholder interplay and weaken the local governance. Our results show that the evolution of baseline landscapes is a blind spot in the landscape governance. Baseline landscapes are used in the development project as a unifying element, considered as consensual and static. This masks the diversity of representations about baseline landscapes and their dynamics. This case study advocates for considering baseline landscapes as a subject of debate.

Seven professionals from diverses disciplines set up creative research for fifteen days in July 2017 at Thouars (Deux Sèvres, France). This creative research was intended to renew the methods of landscape analysis in the digital era. Municipal Council accepted the project.Local stakeholders, associations, and inhabitants take possession of activities to develop places of listening and talks. In the end, creative research, which wanted to be without political commitment, found itself in interactions between local stakeholders and in conflicts of interest. We show in this paper how the creative research become a place of mediation by the landscape. Indeed, this approach was imposed on the group and seems to be a solution to help the governance to implement territorial projects.

This paper introduces the Special section entitled “Disciplinary Perspectives and Critical aspects on Strong Sustainability in Social Sciences and Humanities". It asks about the theoretical significance of the notion of strong sustainability in the fields of economics, philosophy and political science. This introduction aims at presenting the theoretical debates on this notion and to draw a brief overview of its anchoring and influence in social sciences and humanities. It highlights some of the strengths and limits of this notion, since the accentuation and acceleration of global environmental disturbances, question the capacity of social sciences and humanities to study the economic, social and political consequences of the finiteness of nature. Scientific works mobilizing strong sustainability have also focused on solutions to get out of this situation.

The purpose of this paper is to question the meaning of the ecosystem services (ES) approach and its usefulness for regional natural parks. The field work realized in the Park Scarpe-Escaut includes: an observational experience in a research project aiming at valuing several ES on the territory, 10 semi-directive interviews and the analysis of the park’s management documents. The study concludes that ES have important limits, whether they are considered as decision-aid tools or as communicational tools. The case of the park Scarpe-Escaut is interesting because it challenges the belief in the efficacy of ES and monetary arguments for biodiversity protection, spread by the new environmental pragmatists.

This special section brings together a selection of contributions to the “Les temps des territoires” conference organized by the LADYSS laboratory in 2017. It presents a plurality of approaches centered on territories’ temporalities, described through the spaces and their uses, projects and development actions. These approaches from different disciplines question the categories and the tools designed by experts, to measure the time and to analyze the spatio-temporal dynamics. It discusses notably the recurrent use of reference conditions to conduct a project, or the injunction to adapt to climate change. These papers examine the meaning that inhabitants and actors give to the territories trajectories and the resulting retrospective or prospective constructions. This set of proposals has a methodological and reflexive ambition: what is debated in development choices and the meaning given to collective action, as well as the place that researchers can take there.

This paper investigates Ré Island wine growers' perceptions of environmental change, more specifically climate change, and how this brings about a change – or not – in their agricultural practices. Our results show that while they clearly perceive medium-term changes, they are largely unaware of the challenges and vulnerabilities associated with long term changes, which tend to be viewed in a positive light. In effect, their practices do not substantially evolve over time. The island’s professional, political and touristic context shields them from the potentially negative effects of environmental change.

Our paper aims to analyze the modalities of coordination among local actors who are involved in integrated water resources management. So as to understand the dynamics of territorialization, we ground our analysis in the proximity framework to highlight that social and spatial relations around water resources are unbalanced. How this spatial inequality is taken into account may favor, or on the contrary, harm the sustainability of coordination. The approach in terms of proximity allows us to account for the complex articulation between the processes of territorial construction and the subsidiarity and participation principles presented as gage of IWRM success.

This paper analyzes the reconfiguration of the management committee in charge of the common forest in the village of Sarmoli. Through the perspective of the « environmental capital », it shows how an « informal » management committee dealt with the crisis faced by the official management. This new configuration changed the mode of political expression and restrained the scale of decision making. This reconfiguration only focused on gender inequality and thus glossed over the structure of local powers. As a consequence, it did not annihilate all socio-economical inequalities in the village, but only shifted them.