On the French coasts, the flexible coastline management public policy attempts to organise a collective response to a common threat. As local contexts, both natural and human, are varied, adaptation must itself be adapted to them. This discrepancy in scale between global objectives and local contexts represents a difficult exercise for the Conservatoire du littoral, the project leader of Adapto, whose objectives are to demonstrate the advantages of long-term flexible coastal management over short-term hard coastline management (Doze, 2015; Moomaw et al., 2018).
On the front line of rising sea levels, but on natural areas with minor and peripheral human stakes, the Conservatoire du littoral uses its strategic position to defend flexible coastal management geared towards adaptation, through Nature-based Solutions and the retreat of activities. As owner of the land, the institution seeks to preserve its relations with local stakeholders, and undertakes management measures on its sites while considering users’ expectations (Rey-Valette et al. 2019).
Faced with the uncertainty of global climate change effects, coupled with that of the long-term effects of adaptation measures to respond to it, the Conservatoire is wondering, in particular, how to communicate about resilience with local populations in order to achieve better understanding, trust and acceptance of today's management choices for tomorrow (Bourdieu, 1993; McFadgen, Huitema, 2018; Coulbaut-Lazzarini, Couston, 2021).
In Adapto, a survey on users' perceptions was conducted on 11 coastal sites (including 10 in mainland France) proposing scenarios for the evolution of local management. We will present the objectives of this survey, the way in which it was formulated and constructed, the results obtained and what they tell us, both about perceptions and about how the Conservatoire is taking up this subject in the promotion of flexible management as a form of resilience.
Mots clés : Rising sea levels|Social perceptions|Public policy |Environmental communication |Resilience
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