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Calling on the concept of environmental justice in its distributive, procedural and recognition dimensions, we implemented a coelaborative scenario building approach to explore sustainable livelihoods pathways in four sites belonging to two Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa. Grounded on participation and transdisciplinarity, as a foundation for decolonised anticipatory action research, we aimed at stimulating knowledge exchange and providing insights on the future of local livelihoods engaging experts living within these TFCAs. Our results show that wildlife and wildlife-related activities are not seen as the primary drivers of local livelihoods, despite the focus and investments of dominant stakeholders in these sectors. Instead, local governance and land use regulations emerged as key drivers in the four study sites. The state of natural resources, including water, and appropriate farming systems also appeared critical to sustain future livelihoods in TFCAs, together with the recognition of indigenous culture, knowledge and value systems. Nature conservation, especially in Africa, is rooted in its colonial past and struggles to free or decolonise itself from the habits of this past despite decades of reconsideration. To date, the enduring coloniality of conservation prevents local citizens from truly participating in the planning and designing of the TFCAs they live in, leaving room for limited benefits to local citizens and often limiting Indigenous people's capacity to conserve. A practical way forward is to consider environmental justice as a cement between the two pillars of the TFCA concept, that is, nature conservation and socio-economic development of local or neighbouring communities, as part of a more broadly and urgent need to rethink the relationships between people in, and with, the rest of nature.

Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) were created to achieve the promotion of biodiversity conservation while at the same time offering better living conditions for local residents, most of them struggling to live from subsistence agriculture in semi-arid savannas. In addition, local communities bear most of the costs of conservation while getting few of the benefits. While substantial means are invested into biodiversity conservation in TFCAs, too little is invested in the development and well-being of local communities, compromising the health of both social and ecological systems in the long term. The ProSuLi project engaged with four communities living in two TFCAs in three countries (Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe) to identify, co-design, implement and monitor interventions that could improve and diversify livelihoods and, at the same time, manage natural resources. The approach was transdisciplinary, demand-driven and fully participatory, as the project activities were designed by TFCA residents, the final beneficiaries, promoting more environmental justice. Technical support was provided by postgraduate students, senior researchers and other private, governmental and non-governmental institutions. The project's hypothesis was that collective action supported by targeted capacity building and co-designed governance systems could result in a better appropriation of one's livelihood and more sustainable use of natural resources for the benefit of the whole social-ecological system.

With the increasing number of adaptation plans being generated across the world at multiple scales and levels of organization, the issue of coordination among plans is emerging as a significant challenge. We focus on how lack of coordination may constrain their efficiency as a result of potential transfers of vulnerability. This paper focuses on interdependencies between autonomous feedback control loops that represent adaptation processes and makes the link between autonomous action and (social-ecological) system levels. These interdependencies allow changes in vulnerability of one adaptation actor as a consequence of the reduction of vulnerability of another actor. We refer to the processes behind such changes as “vulnerability transfers” and suggest the need for their identification so that actors may make agreements to address them explicitly. A thorough analysis of each step involved in a feedback control loop enables the identification of potential interdependencies, leading to seven basic types of vulnerability transfer. The analysis of example cases of observed transfers of vulnerability in three coastal case studies then demonstrate the suitability of feedback control loop networks to assess, ex-ante, potential vulnerability transfers. The example cases feature all types of theoretically possible vulnerability transfers. Initial empirical investigation showcases the relative importance of shared infrastructures in generating transfers of vulnerability. It also helps to reveal forgotten links to avoid decreasing efficiency of adaptation processes beyond each autonomous agent's jurisdiction. Our representation contributes to a more comprehensive ex-ante identification of transfers and hence the possibility to discuss and manage them.

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.

The sharp end of climate change is being, and will continue to be, experienced at the local and personal scale. How changing patterns of hazards interplay with local landscapes is an important focus of risk management, both in understanding how place-based risk is perceived and in identifying how local populations would like these risks to be managed. In this study we focus on the object of hazard and examine how different meanings associated with water and waterbodies relate to flood risk perception and preferences for flood management strategies. We present analysis of a mixed methods study with survey data (n = 707) of residents in four coastal towns in France, South Africa and UK presented alongside an in-depth study of the two French towns (semi-structured interviews n = 15 and document analysis). Our analysis unpacks the significance of relationships between the meaning of water in general, and the meaning of specific water bodies, to flood risk perceptions. Our findings indicate that general water meaning is more reliably related to flood risk perception than specific waterbody meaning, where waterbody meanings are significant for flood risk perception, positive identification with rivers relates to reduced flood risk perception. We also find that the meanings associated with water and waterbodies relate to specific preferences for different types of flood management, including insurance and local taxation. The implications for landscapes undergoing rapid change, for example as a result of changing climate and hydrological regimes, are discussed. In particular, we highlight how infrastructure interacts with sense of place in communities undergoing rapid social–ecological change and how understanding this interplay can help in the design of more fully supported adaptation strategies.

Coastal areas are exposed to changing patterns of mobility and increasingly extreme weather events, offering unique opportunities to study the complexity of adaptation to global changes and the diversity of responses to risk. How individuals and communities respond to risk varies widely, however traditional rationalist and economic based understandings have proved limited in explaining responses to risk. Increasingly social science, and specifically, a focus on peoples' relationships with their local places is providing a useful approach to understanding human responses to place based change. We bring together literature on sense of place, mobility, risk perception, and adaptation and develop a conceptual model to highlight the dynamic links between these processes. In particular we concentrate on a way of understanding risk that focuses on the role of different types of attachments to place. We explore this model using a pilot study (n = 70) and present data that indicates how different types of place attachments are significant in whether people perceive themselves to be at risk of flooding. Our review and results emphasize the interconnectivity of social and environmental change, and suggests that by identifying particular place attachments, as shaped by mobility, we can deepen our understanding of how communities choose to respond to risk.

The MAGIC research team worked across three different coastal contexts in South Africa, United Kingdom and France. We investigated on the stakeholders' mind-sets about risk associated with climate change and adaptation. The aim was to test through a comparative approach how connectedness between people, and their connectedness with coastal ecosystems, indeed shape people awareness and risk perceptions and influence the way they frame adaptations. This has important consequences for the responses they then implement. Different methods were used to study: - How administration, technicians, elected people and managers frame adaptation to climate change in coastal areas. Interviews were conducted at institutional levels. Two opposing frames emerged across the three different sites: the command and control VS living with the risk frames. On one hand nature is considered as hostile and actions need to be taken to control the risk. On the other hand the variability of nature is accepted and the focus is on actions to reduce the consequences of this variability. - How relationship with place may shape experience of risk in contexts where a variety of groups show constrasted attachment to place. Environmental psychologists have developed several concepts - place meaning, place attachment, sense of place - to study people's relationship with place and have demonstrated that relationship with place influences attitudes and place related behaviors. We conducted extensive survey at each place and found that groups that hold different types of attachment are more sensitive to particular risks and types of adaptations. To conclude we describe these results through a typology of the environmental stewardship approaches which distinguishes 4 main types of stewardship (reformist, adaptive, sustainability and transformative stewardship). This presentation will be complemented with speed talks which focus on the different methods we used. (Texte intégral)

People living along coastlines are facing multiple risks such as flooding, submersion and erosion. The association of growing issues and risks in the face of global change is challenging the responses of individual, collective and public authorities to manage vulnerability of these areas and of their social and ecological components. Depending on the context and on the dominant world views, decision-makers are referring to a multitude of discursive arguments to tell their stories about coastal management and to comment on their adaptation choices. Here, we identify the main frames mobilized in coastal management in three contexts: Cornwall in England, Languedoc in France and Garden Route in South Africa. Through a revision of coastal management documents and a thematic analysis of interviews conducted with institutional decision-makers, we identify the main frames mobilized in the three study cases. Two opposed frames of response emerged across the three sites: the command and control VS living with the risk frames. However, these frames are unequally mobilized through the case studies, and differently introduced and justified. Determinants related to the context, occurrence of extreme events, availability of resources to adapt or socio-political history of the country are pushing towards the use of one of the frame rather than the other. Conversely, the use of the same frame in two different contexts can be explain by a different set of determinants related to the context. This study highlights how adaptation reflects both how different stakeholders diversely interpret information about global change and adaptation, but also how these rationales are strongly context-dependent, leading to diverse cognitive and non-cognitive barriers and opportunities for renewed responses in the face of global change along coastlines. (Texte intégral)

Exposed to changing demographic pressures and extreme climatic events, coastal areas offer unique opportunities to study the complexity of adaptation to global changes and the diversity of responses to risk. How populations and individuals act in the face of risk varies widely: rationalist and economic based understandings that focus on information dissemination have proved inadequate in fully understanding why people do or don't perceive and act on risks. Here we use place attachment as a lens through which to understand perceptions of flood hazard at the household scale. We suggest a way of understanding risk that focuses on the different types of meanings people attach to local places and test the relationship between place attachment and risk perception. Our results from an extensive household survey (n=750) in coastal regions in the Languedoc - France, Garden Route - South Africa and in Cornwall- England demonstrate how processes of mobility shape configurations of place attachments, and what this means for social differentiation of risk. We find that groups within the population that hold different types of place attachment differ in their perceptions of the causes and likelihood of flood events. Our analysis shows that using place attachment theory and methods deepens our understanding of the socio-cognitive processes that underpin how humans respond to environmental uncertainty, especially place related risk. In particular our findings are useful for policy makers in communicating flood risk and in understanding why people may choose not to protect themselves from potential flood events. (Texte intégral)

Biodiversity hotspots exposed to increasing anthropogenic and climatic uncertainties, coastal areas provide excellent laboratories to study global change adaptations. Integrated coastal zone management, set-up as a replicable process, often fail to address challenging wicked issues. Indeed, simultaneous adaptations occurring at different scales or in different activity sectors often result in maladaptations such as vulnerability transfers that impede global sustainability. Addressing these transfers raise conceptual and practical issues. To tackle these, we ran participatory workshops in South Africa, with contrasted and often segregated stakeholders. The workshops started with fun care-giving and mindfulness exercises, to encourage dialogues and co-learning. Participants were then invited to play on a participatory device representing the multi-scale and multi-sector governance of coastal systems. Inspired by Anderies et al.'s (2004) Robustness Framework, the device was designed as a serious game in which players manage public infrastructures in response to contrasted environmental scenarios. In order to represent the decentralized aspect of the governance, each player was responsible for a given sector of activity with clear objectives at given scale and had to cooperate with the others to shape collectively future conditions on their territories. A simple algorithm computed the social, economic and environmental evolutions of the territory based on players' decisions. Combining experts' knowledge (practitioners and scientists) in the design of the game through pre-workshop interviews allowed to build a place-based game meaningful to local stakeholders. Serious games provide realistic boundary objects to grasp cross-sectoral and multiscale vulnerability transfers around global change adaptations. (Texte intégral)