Multiple methods for multiple mindsets about risk and adaptation

The MAGIC research team worked across three different coastal contexts in South Africa, United Kingdom and France. We investigated on the stakeholders' mind-sets about risk associated with climate change and adaptation. The aim was to test through a comparative approach how connectedness between people, and their connectedness with coastal ecosystems, indeed shape people awareness and risk perceptions and influence the way they frame adaptations. This has important consequences for the responses they then implement. Different methods were used to study: - How administration, technicians, elected people and managers frame adaptation to climate change in coastal areas. Interviews were conducted at institutional levels. Two opposing frames emerged across the three different sites: the command and control VS living with the risk frames. On one hand nature is considered as hostile and actions need to be taken to control the risk. On the other hand the variability of nature is accepted and the focus is on actions to reduce the consequences of this variability. - How relationship with place may shape experience of risk in contexts where a variety of groups show constrasted attachment to place. Environmental psychologists have developed several concepts - place meaning, place attachment, sense of place - to study people's relationship with place and have demonstrated that relationship with place influences attitudes and place related behaviors. We conducted extensive survey at each place and found that groups that hold different types of attachment are more sensitive to particular risks and types of adaptations. To conclude we describe these results through a typology of the environmental stewardship approaches which distinguishes 4 main types of stewardship (reformist, adaptive, sustainability and transformative stewardship). This presentation will be complemented with speed talks which focus on the different methods we used. (Texte integral)