Forest dieback due to climate change poses a risk to mountain forests throughout the world, and has severe consequences in terms of lost ecosystem services for forest stakeholders. This contribution ...aims to analyze how forest stakeholders perceive forest dieback, and the way in which they adapt to it. We conducted qualitative in-depth interviews in three mid-mountain case study areas in France, Germany, and China, enabling a cross-comparison of different settings affected by forest dieback. Results show that forest dieback is not a new phenomenon for stakeholders who consider that it has increased over the last few decades, due to rising temperatures and extreme weather events. In all survey areas, respondents consider forest dieback as tangible proof of climate change, identifying context-specific impacts with varying levels of severity. Cause-effect relationships are not easy to establish. Forest stakeholders are unable to determine whether climate change is a triggering or aggravating factor. For adaptive strategies, respondents can be grouped into three main profiles: proactive, reactive, and wait-and-see forest owners. These types of stakeholders differ in terms of their investment capacities, economic dependency, emotional attachment to forests, knowledge level, and capacity to obtain actionable information through participation in institutional networks.
Symbole d’un monopole décisionnel des forestiers, la coupe rase est devenue au fil du temps une pratique controversée. Seuls à décider des règles d’exécution de cet acte technique au XVIIe siècle, ...les forestiers doivent transiger avec une nouvelle élite intellectuelle au XIXe siècle. Celle-ci porte en effet de nouvelles valeurs et représentations esthétiques de l’espace forestier en rupture avec la vision technique classique. Si ce mouvement de protestation obtient des concessions avec la création de réserves artistiques, le principe de la coupe rase demeure, laissant la porte ouverte à de futures contestations. Messages clés :• La coupe rase est devenue une pratique publiquement controversée au cours du XIXe siècle.• La rationalisation et modernisation de cette technique va accentuer les tensions au cours du XXe siècle.• Ces tensions témoignent d’une divergence progressive des représentations sociales de la forêt entre forestiers et usagers.
Après la seconde Guerre mondiale, la modernisation des techniques de sylviculture banalise la coupe rase transformant profondément les paysages ruraux. Dans les années 1960, de nouveaux mouvements ...sociaux contestent cette orientation et souhaitent une meilleure prise en compte de l’environnement. Si l’intégration paysagère des coupes rases permet d’apaiser les conflits dans les années 1990, cette solution ne répond que partiellement à une demande d’écologisation des pratiques sylvicoles. L’augmentation de la récolte de bois dans les années 2010 pose à nouveau la question de la place de la coupe rase dans les itinéraires sylvicoles. Acte technique, elle devient aussi un marqueur politique. Messages clés :• Avec le FFN, la technique de la coupe rase se mécanise se banalise et se dépolitise.• Dans les années 1960, l’impact écologique de cette pratique est à nouveau interrogé par les associations naturalistes.• Au cours des années 1990, elle devient le symbole d’une repolitisation et d’une écologisation des enjeux forestiers.
En dépit de l’attention croissante accordée aux catastrophes climatiques, leur influence réelle sur les changements de pratiques reste ambivalente. Pour contribuer à ce débat, nous questionnons les ...stratégies d’adaptation adoptées par des propriétaires forestiers suite à la sécheresse de 2003 (Aude) et la tempête de 2009 (Landes de Gascogne). L’hypothèse défendue est que ces catastrophes n’ont conduit ni à la révolution, ni au statu quo mais à une « bifurcation assistée ». En effet, les stratégies mises en œuvre dix ans après oscillent entre retour aux routines et intensification des pratiques sylvicoles. Ces changements dans la continuité s’expliquent notamment par le fait que l’autorité des experts, loin d’être ébranlée, fut renforcée par les processus de sortie de crise. Au final, cet article souligne l’intérêt de penser les catastrophes, non pas seulement comme des risques à venir, mais comme des laboratoires permettant d’éprouver la pertinence et l’efficacité des réflexions sur l’adaptation.
Abstract Key message The invasive pine wood nematode is a major threat to pine forests worldwide, causing extensive tree mortality. Although scientific knowledge and control measures are continuously ...improving, important gaps remain. We argue that some key questions, notably related to early detection and pest management, need to be urgently tackled in countries at risk of invasion such as France.
Si la forêt incarne la nature pour les Français, la notion de naturalité leur est beaucoup moins familière et leur semble relever du sauvage. Pourtant, certains signes montrent que ces ...représentations évoluent : les bois morts sont désormais tolérés, voire promus pour leur qualité écologique par les forestiers comme par le public ; les espaces dédiés à la naturalité tels que les réserves biologiques intégrales sont de plus en plus nombreuses sur le territoire métropolitain. Les raisons de cette adhésion restent cependant ambivalentes. Certains forestiers et usagers de la forêt le font pour éviter d’être accusé de négligence environnementale alors que d’autres sont vraiment convaincus de l’intérêt de laisser des espaces en libre évolution pour la biodiversité et la résilience des forêts face aux changements climatiques. Dans les deux cas, la naturalité retrouve progressivement et bon gré mal gré une place dans nos écosystèmes forestiers et nos représentations de la forêt.
This paper scrutinizes the different roles played by scientists when they built and put on the agenda biodiversity conservation as a public problem, by taking dead wood preservation as an example. By ...playing six roles successively or simultaneously, they succeeded in transforming this neglected by-product of forest management in an essential indicator of forest biodiversity in less than a decade. This evolution was effective because of an intense work of categorisation, and unexpected climatic catastrophe, and the emergence of international environmental standards. This combination of factors led to a new reinterpretation of traditional forestry cognitive frames and their alignment on the ecologization of productive practices, more favourable to dead wood conservation.
Ecological indicators are widely used to support public action. Their proliferation requires critical appraisal of their normative framing. This article deploys a conceptual framework to reveal their ...underlying assumptions and worldviews through the critical exploration of the controversies raised during their making and use. It consists in focusing on processes of categorizing and quantifying the environment. Ecological indicators are simplified representations of reality. As such, they constitute social conventions which unite environmental realities existing in specific time and places, while excluding others. We study how they align or confront political constructions of territories or advocacy coalitions in relation to the causal relations they support and the scale at which they are built. We assess whether their ecological framing has become a resource for political framing. We question how far financial considerations and practical use have constrained the making and the use of indicators, with specific attention paid to path dependence from existing data. This article concludes by introducing the other contributions of this volume, by specifying how each one relates to the political appropriation of one or more designing steps of an ecological indicator, to the advantage of existing indicators, and to the effects of ecological indicators in policies.
In order to prove the high level of biodiversity in the French forests, public authorities decided to choose dead wood volume as a referential indicator in 2011. This choice resulted from a long ...scientific and sociopolitical process that has elevated lack of deadwood – yet traditionally ignored by forest stakeholders – as an environmental public issue. After a moment of confusion, tests, and argumentative construction to catch decision makers’ attention, scientists finally proved the importance of dead wood for biodiversity thanks to an intense work of categorization and objectification. Although the scientific community has succeeded in elevating dead wood as a key indicator of biodiversity, this status is continuously under the threats of scientific advances. Taking into account the diversity of dead wood logs seems indeed more interesting than measuring the volume alone. Likewise, innovative metric processes such as AND barcoding provide more precise information on saproxylic biodiversity than the volume of dead wood that could appear as an outdated metrics. Nevertheless other factors such as data collection costs, practicability of implementation, and communicability towards forest managers, may convince public authorities to keep dead wood volume as a referential indicator. The double status of deadwood which is simultaneously a handy and stable indicator for forest management and also an on-going research object, may evolve significantly according to the scientific and political choices that will be made in the next decade.
Since the mid-2000s, the critical role of biomass for achieving the French renewable energy objectives is viewed as a means to entice private forest owners to be more proactive in sustainable wood ...harvesting. However, how bioenergy policies are really implemented and lead (or not) to practice changes at the forest management level remains unclear. In this paper, we assume that these sustainable transition pathways depend on power relations, negotiations and trade-offs between policymakers and forest industry in the one hand and between forest industry and forest owners on the other hand. To address this challenge, we develop a comprehensive and meso-micro level approach informed by theoretical insights from the Multi-Level Perspective of system innovation (MLP) and the Social Practice Theory (SPL). Monitoring the implementation process of two bioenergy policies in Aquitaine region (southwestern France), we show that forest industries are recognized as a progressive force in sustainable transition processes despite their underlying propensity to consider bioenergy policies as a new means to optimize their economic interests regarding forest resources. Conversely, even if forest owners often withstand implementing the most intensive forestry models, they may adopt new practices incrementally, proceeding with caution and without completely abandoning their existing practices. Finally, by coupling the MLP and the STP models, we provide a more nuanced picture of both firms’ engagement and forest owners’ resistance in the dynamics of change. One of the main policy implication is that sustainable transition not only challenges the management capacity of reluctant or inexperienced forest owners but also the collective willingness of forest industries to really support transformative changes in wood mobilization processes.
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