Nils Ferrand and Mathieu Mangeot
Supporting your participative programmes for ecological and technical transitions supported by citizens
Our proposal
Bringing together research teams from INRAE (formerly IRSTEA) and INRIA, and the companies Résurgences R&D and Terriflux, we offer territories committed to the socio-ecological transition new methods and tools, derived from scientific research, to :
- Helping to implement the participation of stakeholders, citizens, elected representatives, managers, private and public operators and associations in your transition project;
- Better address the complexity of situations and facilitate decision-making in your transition projects;
- Increase social ownership, justice and the sustainability of the effects of your transition projects.
3 areas of research and intervention are proposed. They combine innovation, experimentation, modelling and training:
Axis 1: Engineering methods and tools for the participation of all stakeholders (including citizens) in the various decision-making stages (organisation of participation, framing of monitoring-evaluation, diagnosis, objectives, planning, choices, steering) of the project;
Axis 2: The participative use of territorial modelling to help you think about your transition(s);
Axis 3: IT support for design, management and participation, serving elected representatives, managers and citizens.
Partnership projects will be set up to support these initiatives on a long-term basis, with ‘co-piloting’ based on process monitoring and impact assessment. In practical terms, the aim is to work with you to develop intervention programmes that meet the needs of your areas, by mobilising and adapting together the methods derived from our research.
The benefits for your region
- Helping to characterise and specify the support needs of your regions, proposing demonstrations and evaluating the possibilities of scientific and methodological responses
- Help your regions to become more sustainable and resilient, while maintaining social justice
- Provide all the players involved with the training they need to successfully implement the project
- Set up real experiments in support of local political will
- Monitor and evaluate the processes and their effects, on the basis of criteria developed jointly with all the players involved.
Producing scientific knowledge
- Qualify the corresponding scientific hypotheses and issues
- Develop parameterised territorial models adapted to participatory decision-making
- Develop test processes in partnership with you to validate our approaches
- Analysing and using monitoring and evaluation data to produce publishable results of scientific value
- Generalising the products, extending and disseminating these results
Scenario 1: In an area with an established quantitative water deficit and a Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP), how can we help design a compatible Ecological Transition Contract (ETC)? Irrigated agriculture in the area is a major consumer (and employer), with ‘virtual’ water transfers outside the basin.
⇒ How can an ETC and a possible agricultural plan be directed to relocate these uses and contribute to energy and food autonomy? How can we distribute the effort on water – jobs – energy among the various users? How can we co-design and provide the methods and tools for organising participation and fuelling consultation on: the state of play, proposals for alternatives (e.g. water reuse, agri-photovoltaics, cultivation practices, etc.), their evaluation according to different criteria, dialogue and finally co-decision.
Scenario 2: A mountain region is facing an increase in unemployment due to the desertion of tourists. An analysis of the timber industry shows that a large amount of raw material is exported abroad and then re-imported in the form of finished products. ⇒ What would be the relevance and impact (social, economic, environmental, etc.) of relocating a sawmill and furniture factory in the region?
Scenario 3: An area already produces 5% of the food consumed by its residents locally and wants to increase its resilience by helping to convert farms. It also has to decide whether to build a new district on arable land under heavy residential pressure. The land use analysis shows that the ratio of built-up areas is already significant, and that flood risk would be exacerbated by a new extension. The SCOT and SAGE still need to be coordinated. And a residents’ association is fighting against any changes. ⇒ How can we support new deliberations between all these stakeholders? How can we help assess the various complex options?
Systemic approach
Over and above these scenarios requiring sectoral knowledge, a clearly identified difficulty in transition approaches is taking account of the interactions between sectors. This requires a systemic analysis of the target area. In this context, an assessment of the flows in and out of an area in terms of water, food, energy and raw materials is a necessary first step. We can help you put in place a systemic approach tailored to local issues.
Context
- Growing demand from local and regional authorities (municipalities, EPCIs, countries, regions) to support their transition, adaptation and sustainability policies (PT, CTE, PCAET, PDD, etc.), and in particular to encourage real, sustainable and concrete co-commitment from all stakeholders;
- The need for political and social reflection on the very notion of transition, expectations for change, the COVID crisis and the related issues of social justice (who participates? what solidarity and sharing of resources?);
- Limited mastery of participatory decision-making and engagement processes, compatible with recent incentive regulations (e.g. on Environmental Dialogue, 2016).
- Mutual distrust between institutions and citizens
- Limited capacity for analysis on the part of civil society and elected representatives;
- Major complexity in the target situations, with a tangle of sectors, levels, timeframes, players, levers and policies, but above all very significant constraints on the initial range of possibilities;
- A favourable regulatory and financial context, with new support instruments for participatory approaches (Ord. 8/2016 on Environmental Dialogue) and transition (CTE);
- Complementary work and skills present in the partner institutions, between participatory decision engineering, socio-technical and socio-ecological transitions, modelling and computer instrumentation of public policies.
Examples of actions envisaged, based on previous work
- Help all the players in your area to work together to define the principles and a participation plan to support the transitions; initiate a dialogue based on participative simulations (e.g. serious games); enable citizens’ proposals to be assembled into a realistic transition plan; promote sustainable commitments between citizens and institutions;
- To model, evaluate and discuss the social and environmental relevance of the alternative ways of organising the way in which the area operates that emerge from the previous stage;
- Equip the players (elected representatives, managers, participants) with online tools to co-design, organise and steer participation on an ongoing basis, using evaluation to improve them along the way.
- Raise awareness of and provide training in these approaches beforehand, so that they can be tested.
Previous experience
INRAE G-EAU : Participation and Decision Engineering Team (IPD)
Since 2003, the IPD team has been developing a range of participatory decision-making methods grouped together in the ‘CoOPLaGE’ programme (see figure on next page), tailored to the needs of stakeholders of all types and at all levels, and validated in numerous international projects. It provides training for stakeholders, either face-to-face or via online training. In this way, it supports public institutions in their change processes, using innovative approaches that are then made freely available to all. The tools used are either face-to-face (physical), digital or hybrid.
STEEP: For the past ten years, the INRIA STEEP research team has been modelling and analysing the environmental pressures of the biomass industries in France and the regions (see https://flux-biomasse.fr). It has carried out in-depth work (Michela Bevione’s thesis) on the socio-ecological issues (quantitative and qualitative) associated with the Beaufort cheese sector in the Maurienne valley. It has also carried out a study on the assessment of bio-waste deposits in the Grenoble metropolitan area (see figure below).
Terriflux is a company incubated in the Inria Startup Studio incubator. Part of the STEEP team, it specialises in analysing the physical flows involved in production, processing, transport, consumption and end-of-life processes, as well as the environmental and socio-economic issues associated with these flows.
Résurgences R&D is an R&D and consultancy company specialising in IT for public policy support. As a partner of the UMR G-EAU, it is currently developing the eCoOPLAaGE IT service, which should give stakeholders access to all CoOPLAaGE functions online. This includes, for example, CoOPILOT, a specific tool to help manage participatory processes.
Possible funding
Setting up joint projects with various funding bodies: MTE, ADEME, OFB, regions, Europe, foundations, FEADER, etc.
Territories under consideration
Montpellier 3M, Grand Annecy, Grenoble, Lyon, Argelès, SUD (Serre-Ponçon – Ubaye – Durance), Cerdagne, Pays d’Arles, Briançonnais, Thau, PNR Luberon, PNR Chartreuse, PNR Vercors, …
Contacts
| Mathieu Mangeot Mathieu.Mangeot@inria.fr INRIA STEEP Grenoble Tel. 0954493197 | Nils Ferrand Nils.Ferrand@inrae.fr INRAE G-EAU Montpellier Tel. 0673993693 | Samuel Tronçon stroncon@resurgences.eu Résurgences R&D Arles Tel. 0652953118 |
