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Summer School "Ecology and Society: Frontiers and Boundaries" / 3 - 7 June 2019

Nicolas ROCLE

Last update Friday 15 February 2019
Nicolas ROCLE

Researcher, Irstea Bordeaux

Nicolas Rocle is a sociologist working at Irstea, Bordeaux. His work focuses on climate change adaptation policies and governance in coastal areas. This general theme gives way to several research works on regional and local adaptation plans, post-disaster experience feedbacks (hurricanes and storms in Lesser Antilles), learning processes and adaptive management on coastal areas, as well as the politics of managed retreat to face sea level rise and associated risks. He is involved in various research projects, such as PAMPAS (“Evolution of the heritage identity of marshes in response to sea level rise and marine flooding in Pertuis Charentais”, National Research Agency) and TIREX (“Sharing learning from post-disaster research for strengthening adaptive capacities in the context of climate change”, ANR). He participates in different expertise and working groups on climate change adaptation at regional and national level (AcclimaTerra, IUCN-France, National Alliance for Environmental Research).


Talk on Friday 7th June

> Adapting to climate change on New-Aquitaine coastline: a history of boundary-work?

Despite a long history of protection and conservation work, the New-Aquitaine coast in southwest France is one of the coastlines most at risk from erosion and submersion at the European level, and this will be accentuated by climate change and sea level rise. In recent years, the Region of New-Aquitaine has been active in putting climate change adaptation on the scientific and political agenda. Two specific dynamics will be presented. Firstly, a group of scientific experts, called AcclimaTerra, has been set up to synthesize the state of knowledge on local and regional impacts and vulnerabilities to climate change. Secondly, the Public Interest Group of Aquitaine coastline is a formal public partnership set up in 2006 between all coastal authorities in the region, including state services. This governance structure participates in the multi-level governance of coastal issues, and can be defined as a “boundary-entrepreneur”. The presentation will thus highlight the role of these two forms of boundary-organisations in the governance of coastal adaptation in New-Aquitaine. From that, I will discuss the assumptions of producing and mobilizing ‘actionable knowledge’, function of credibility, salience and legitimacy of the knowledge produced.