“Functional fit” versus “politics of scale” in the governance of floodplain retention capacity

Abstract

After major floods occurred in 2003 on the Rhône River (France), the State and local authorities created a new institution at river level, in order to tackle flood issues at a supposedly more functional scale. Called Plan Rhône, this new partnership combined several policy sectors and several administrative levels, with the aim of developing the river territory and preserving floodplain retention capacity. The plan included a floodplain restoration project. However, after five years of negotiation, the project was finally abandoned. In this article, we analyze the drivers behind the failure to preserve floodplain retention capacity by focusing on scale issues, using two theoretical frameworks: the concept of "functional fit" between the scale of ecological issues and that of the institutions in charge of those issues, and the concept of "politics of scale" in which scale results from historical processes. We conclude that the scaling of an issue results from history. It legitimates a specific point of view and hampers alternative ways of seeing reality at other scales.

Water governance across competing scales: Coupling land and water management

“…They are also good candidates to serve as arenas to organise collective action, even in clearly open social-hydrological systems. However, flows of knowledge and irreversibility effects limit their effectiveness in the operationalisation of agreements (Guerrin et al, 2014). There is thus a need to integrate the ''wider socio-economic catchment context'' (Syme et al, 2012) and hence investigate the viability of developing problemshed governance arrangements.…”

“…In this special issue, there are other more original examples of the irreversibility effect. Both are based on the framing of actions due to slow changes in frame representations of stakeholders, such as worldviews and norms of justice (Gross and Dumaresq, 2014) or rationalisation of a decision at a moment that structures further decisions accordingly (Guerrin et al, 2014). In other words, people's representations that may have otherwise evolved at a faster pace become stuck and difficult to change 4.…”

“…These arguments are closely linked to the type of arguments common in the ''politics of scale'' (and place) and political ecology literature on water governance (see Norman et al, 2012, for an overview), including those on the ''hydrosocial cycle'' (Budds, 2009;Linton and Budds, 2014;Bourblanc and Blanchon, 2013;Guerrin et al, 2014) or to the ecological and associated institutional economics literature on ''functional fit'' (see Guerrin et al, 2014) where it is suggested that water managers and academics need to move away from considering water as a physically constrained resource, to considering it as a social-ecological process, hence explicitly recognising the interconnected nature of human institutions and practices on water and its linked systems, and vice versa. This will allow political and other drivers of water governance and its entrenchment and/or change to be understood and possibly better managed in future reform periods; including what administrative structures and institutional mechanisms, or other water-related innovations or practices, are likely to be successfully taken up in specific environments (Daniell et al, 2014).…”

The development and intersection of highland-coastal scale frames: a case study of water governance in central Peru

“…Scale has attracted considerable attention and generated intensive debate in the environmental governance literature (Newig & Moss, 2017 1 ). Much of relevant socialecological systems (SESs) and resilience research relating to scale has been primarily concerned with seeking the 'correct' scale of governance or avoiding scale mismatch between the scale of the problem and the scale along which it is governed (Cash et al, 2006;Guerrin, Bouleau, & Grelot, 2014). In contrast to this approach, political and human geography scholars have focused on the social and political construction of scale (Swyngedouw, 2004;Newig & Moss, 2017).…”

Processus de qualification et construction d’un compromis institutionnel territorialisé. La gestion intégrée de l’eau par bassin dans le canton de Fribourg (Suisse)

“…Les termes du débat peuvent être résumés par la confrontation de deux approches du changement d'échelle pour la régulation des enjeux environnementaux (Guerrin et al, 2014). D'une part, l'approche en termes d'adéquation fonctionnelle [functional fit], plus normative, traite de l'adéquation des modalités institutionnelles avec les processus écologiques qu'elles doivent encadrer (Ostrom, 1990 ;Ekstrom et Young, 2009).…”