In role in a rolling landscape: Re-thinking multi-scale vulnerability transfers in the Anthropocene

To explore transfers of vulnerability and their consequences with local stakeholders in southern France, a role-playing game session with 50 elected representatives and experts coming from various sectoral organizations was organized. The role-playing game involved 4 different landscapes of a coastal region: a littoral area, an agricultural plain, an urbanized area, and a river valley—with each landscape set up on a separate table. The participants were positioned either as land managers in different sectors (urban, agricultural, biodiversity conservation, green tourism, mass tourism) or elected decision-makers in charge of collective decisions and negotiation with other territories. For each round, the players had the option of placing infrastructures (dikes, irrigation networks, labelling, nature reserves) in management units under their responsibility in order to influence development trajectories. Based on their decisions, the land cover and use of these areas were updated (resident and tourist populations, agricultural crops, biodiversity). Different events, e.g. coastal erosion, river flooding, salinity change, droughts, and population growth affected the different territories. Participants had to meet their individual goals and collectively address the various pressures associated with changes in their territory. This experiment and its collective debriefing showed that adaptations at the local scale enabled players to temporarily cope with the pressures of global change by transferring these pressures to other territories. Overall, the weight of urbanization in short-term decision-making remains crucial. Protecting farmland and biodiversity remains challenging in the face of demographic pressure. Financial resources and coordination are not enough, it is key to have trust and flexible regulations in order to be able to innovate and adapt. Sensitizing land users to the processes of vulnerability transfers may improve social-ecological solidarity between them and gives meaning to their actions and their consequences. We assume that through this learning experiment, participants reinforce their resilience to future changes. (Texte integral)