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In 2017 and 2019 there took place the first two editions of a Summer Seminar entitled "About the 2 °C" dedicated to the challenges of interdisciplinarity in research and training courses on climate change. In this paper, we focus on the motivations that led to launching this initiative, as well as to the positioning and progress of these first two editions, which highlighted the scientific and socio-political challenges raised by the implementation of interdisciplinarity in research, particularly regarding an object as protean as climate change. Besides, this paper provides a good opportunity to take stock of the possible evolutions of this Summer Seminar, given the societal and scientific challenges associated with the understanding and management of the impact of global changes on our environment and our societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of climate change in southwestern Burkina Faso remains poorly documented and even sometimes controversial in discourse. For some, the South-west region remains one of the most watered regions of the country, based on the quantities of water measured globally. This may seem true because it is based on objective measurements, but the 'real' discourse of the Dagara of Dano and Dissihn refers to disturbances in the agricultural production system due to climate change. Using a socioanthropological approach, including quantitative data, observation data, focus groups and in-depth interviews, this paper seeks to understand the perception and experience of climate change by the Dagara of Dano and Dissihn in the light of the 'basic forms' of their religious life. The study reveals that the construction of climate changes in the Dagara language, the explanation of its causes and the description of its manifestations are intimately linked to the religious identity of the Dagara. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we shed light and analyze a very broad consensus that exists among economists regarding green investments. Beyond some divergences, mainstream and heterodox economists present green investments as a necessary and first condition to solve the ecological crisis. The main part of our research focuses on the pitfalls of what we call the Green Investment Paradigm. We highlight the reductionist, normative, ahistorical and depoliticizing vision, a consequence of a problem-solving framework. We finally discuss what is outside of the box and highlight some of the debates that need to be invested to contribute to a serious assessment of the causes of ecological crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic research, policy reports and many agencies and organizations have focused on the role of cities in contributing to implement climate policies designed to mitigate, and adapt to, climate change. This led the French government to compel all local authorities responsible for over 20,000 inhabitants to adopt the so-called PCAETs (plans climat-air-énergie territorial/local climate, air and energy plans) by 2018. The purpose of our paper was to understand how these local plans seize on climate issues, by highlighting both the objectives they claim to achieve and the main ways used to reach them. First, we identified in the scientific literature the main levers available that enable cities to have an effect regarding climate change. Then, we compared these possibilities to the governance objectives of three middle-sized French cities assumed to have adopted ambitious PCAETs. We show that all three cities have energy saving and local coordination objectives, but that they act on only one of the three other levers they could theoretically mobilize (energy production, changes in infrastructure and modification of the urban structure). We also demonstrate that these cities implement their plan by attempting to extend the climate issues to the whole city council services and that they use labelling distinctions to motivate policy actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper is a reflexive return on an interdisciplinary and participative research program on climate change and its impacts in Burgundy. This work involved the joint participation of researchers in social sciences and in climatology and is also based on exchanges with stakeholders of water resources. To gain knowledge on past climate, scientists use proxies such as tree rings, CO2 levels in ice, dates of grape harvest, etc. We suggest that proxies may find a new place in knowledge construction on current climate change. Climate science can discover in other disciplines such as ecology evidence of recent changes, which represent proxies of climate change. Regular notes on changes recorded by citizens in their daily life environment are also a rich source of proxy indices on climate change; they contribute to knowledge on daily life and practice. Empirical and scientific knowledge, usually reputed to be wide apart, converge on the fact that climate is mainly appraised by proxy indicators. We suggest that connecting knowledges at a local scale will help give insight into climate change. To closely associate the global climate model to local knowledge and real-life experiences is a lever to adapt locally to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within urban areas, a growing number of citizens independently set up initiatives to face climate change, such as greening, urban agriculture or alternative energy projects. This paper seeks to understand how local citizens'actors contribute to urban climate governance through small-scale social and environmental experiments. Based on a Montreal (Canada) neighbourhood Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie case study of eight initiatives, the research is based on a theoretical framework combining climate governance experiments and sociotechnical transition theory. The accumulation and influence of such initiatives can contribute to redefine urban issues and demonstrate the feasibility and acceptability of simple solutions in order to implement an urban transition in face of climate change. Using their social network but also their objectives and know-how, urban activists establish their legitimacy as stakeholders who can propose alternatives to the municipal government. Results of the study also show that such local experiments reflect the growing power of informal collective modes of action. Indeed, through local "green" actions, citizens produce impacts that are immediate, concrete, simple and "personal-benefit-oriented." By doing so, they build new ecosystems made of various partnerships. This offers an innovative alternative model in the face of the current ways of consuming resources and about how we socially deal with the climate crisis under a paradigm shaped by capitalism and neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aquaculture accounts today for approximately 50% of total aquatic products for human consumption. This contribution is expected to increase in the future taking into account the fact that capture fisheries are estimated to have reached their maximum level of catches. While some research has been carried out concerning the impact of climate change on capture fisheries, only very few has been done yet dealing with aquaculture. The present review paper aims at identifying the challenges aquaculture will need to face in this new context of climate change and at suggesting ways in order to forecast and overcome them. Six main components of the aquatic environment are investigated in view of their potential direct impact on aquaculture: sea level rise, changes in temperature, rainfall, river floods and droughts, water availability, water quality deterioration and ocean acidification. Indirect impact of climate change on aquaculture concerns mainly fish meal and oil as strategic inputs for feed manufacture, coming from pelagic fisheries whose catches are affected by climate change. Two strategies may be developed to address climate change challenges. The first one consists in developing solutions enabling to deal with the environmental changes induced by climate change (high salinity tolerant strain, site selection); the second consists in developing systems where all the environmental parameters are strictly monitored and controlled. Reciprocally, the impact of aquaculture on climate change is briefly mentioned. At the end of this paper, a comprehensive worldwide survey carried out by FAO in 2016 shows clearly that measures have already started to be implemented to deal with climate change in the field of aquaculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Côte d'Ivoire's agricultural dynamism continues to surprise commodity markets, especially those of cocoa and rubber. The country has also become the world's leading producer of cashew nuts. How to understand this boom? It is partly driven by markets (stagnation of cotton and cocoa prices versus rising prices of cashew nuts over two periods) but its determining factors are much more complex. The global hypothesis of this study is that the adoption of cashew tree is an adaptation to the loss of forest rent and to climate change, to the increasing cost of chemical inputs for cotton and cocoa, but also responds to land insecurity. An in-depth study was conducted in 2016–2017 in 6 sites chosen along a north-south gradient: Mankono, Konahiri, Bonon, Yamoussoukro, Bayota-Gagnoa and Soubré, with 40 to 100 farms per site, with partial updates in 2018. The survey confirms the hypothesis. Cashew tree, a robust, drought-tolerant tree, for the time being avoids planters relying on chemical inputs and credit, rebuilds a kind of forest canopy, but is also a land marker (it brings an informal land security in the home villages of the migrants but also in their cocoa villages). It becomes the tool of a social and ecological transition. That transition includes significant information, labour and investment flows between the two economic spaces. It is essentially a smallholders' innovation. In the cocoa regions, in its agroforestry version made of cocoa and cashew intercropping, the cashew tree reduces the mortality of cocoa seedlings, and its adoption takes its full dimension of agro-ecological transition. Is family farming alone achieving what the chocolate industry promises on paper: a "zero-deforestation" and sustainable cocoa farming? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides new insights into the vegetation of the black continent (Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Gabon, Nigeria, Mali and Burkina Faso). It particularly explores the relationship between Africans and trees through the prism of colonization. The regions studied have suffered successive waves of occupation. Each newcomer had a specific relationship with the tree. Today, the result is an unstable balance between the environmental constraints that shape the background of the plant capital, the needs and means of the populations, all guided by cultural habits and pre-colonial and colonial heritage. These inheritances, which are diametrically opposed, are under tension in African societies, with the public administration acting as moderator. With little financial and human resources, it tries to preserve the wooded heritage, especially since we now know it is important in times of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether the calibrated parameter values for two rainfall–runoff models based on historical observed data can be used to reliably predict runoff responses to changes in future climate inputs. Analyses are carried out using historical monthly climate and runoff data from 27 catchments in West and Central Africa. Better performances are obtained when the models are calibrated on a dry period to predict runoff in a wet period. Similarly, it is easier for the models calibrated on a period of large hydroclimatic variability to predict runoff in a period of small hydroclimatic variability than the contrary. This paper tests also the assumption that transferability of rainfall–runoff models, variable hydroclimatic conditions, and local sensitivity of the model parameters can be linked. The inconclusive results still show variability according to the chosen efficiency criteria and selected periods. All these results indicate that the transfer of model parameters from one period to another can introduce a significant error in runoff simulations, which means increased uncertainty in the assessment of impact of climate and environmental changes, an essential question for West and Central Africa.Editeur M.C. Acreman; Editeur associé Gil Mahé [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From knowledge to know-how: evolution of REDD+ design and constraints to its implementation in central Africa. This paper describes the genesis of REDD + in order to analyze the relationship between the evolution of its design and the scientific literature published about it between 1997 and 2014. An analytical framework, involving the study of interactions between science and environmental public policy, and the discursive institutional analysis, is used. Three main phases are outlined. The Pre-RED phase, between 1997 and 2004, is that of the emergence of the concept of "compensated reduction" of emissions. Phase 2, between 2005 and 2009, is that of the effective development of REDD +, with a rich scientific production. The third phase, which began in 2010, focused on REDD+ readiness, with an abundant scientific production that has started to evaluate REDD+ procedures and pilots initiatives in developing countries. The paper then reports on the preparation for REDD+ in Central Africa countries, from a comparative reading of the readiness preparation proposals. Although this preparation is stepped, the necessary or specific know-how which can help avoid or reduce deforestation is not clearly stated. This highligts the diffuse nature of REDD+ even in its operational phase. The know-how is focused more on technical aspects related to monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV). It reveals inconsistencies between economic development and forest protection, as well as practical difficulties stressing the need for land reform and land planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper analyses the construction and implementation processes of local climate policies taking environmental policies as an analytical framework. Climate change, currently designated as "the climate problem", is considered as a new object for collective action. The analysis makes a distinction between mitigation actions that aim to reduce identified causes of the problem (control and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptive actions designed to anticipate the consequences and effects of climate change. Based on an analysis of institutional and scientific literature and on observations collected since 2005 via several research projects on the integration of climate issues into regional and local actions (Bertrand et Larrue, 2007; Bertrand et Rocher, 2007; Bertrand et al. 2012), the paper focusses on two characteristic dimensions of local environmental action : first the territorialization of climate action considered through two periods of institutionalization -- the time of pioneers and the time of generalization --, and second the terms of operationalization of local climate policies analysed in terms of co-construction, consultation and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we evaluate the feasibility of estimating the previous distribution of a tree species, the beech, from the analysis of toponyms presently in use and referring to this species. Specialists from toponymy, agromomy and geometics have been involved. Toponyms are a precious source of information about past distribution: more than 6100 toponyms referring to beech have been detected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A brief history of adaptation: conceptual evolution across the IPCC reports (1990-2014). In the past decade, work on the concepts of vulnerability, resilience and adaptation became central in climate change literature. At the same time a growing number of studies have focussed on the influence of cognitive factors on decision-making processes, such as interpreting elusive concepts such as adaptation. Comprehension of adaptation has evolved considerably since its recognition as a response to climate change in the 90s by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Currently protecting systems from weather events (the "adjustment adaptation" approach) is still the prevailing view in climate policies. Nevertheless, a shift toward a "transformation adaptation" approach is being observed. This position would take better account of the complexity of existing systems and allow reexamining their mechanisms (institutional, technical, financial). This paper aims to analyze conceptual advances on adaptation across the five IPCC reports from 1990 to 2014. This contribution attempts to show that the prominence given to adaptation in the latest report (2014) reflects the cognitive difficulty of conceiving this concept, responds to the growing demand to facilitate its operationalization and confirms its relevance for a better understanding of the underlying complexity of climate change and the global environmental change issue. Pursuing reflection on the adaptation concept should certainly contribute to the emergence of a promising and interdisciplinary field of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-benefits of climate policies: a potential keystone of climate negotiations? This paper analyzes the challenges related to the assessment of co-benefits of climate policies underpinned by the implementation of multi-objective policies which seek synergies between climate policies and other development objectives (poverty alleviation, employment, health etc.). The analysis highlights the increasing interest in co-benefits in the latest 5th IPCC report, in particular by integrated models. Nevertheless, the quantified evaluation of co-benefits is still confronted to several methodological limitations which reduce the scope of co-benefits, particularly at the global level. In a growing context of climate-development approaches in climate negotiations, this article insists on the need to also assess cobenefits of other policies which induce a significant part of GHG emissions. Considering climate policies focused only on Greehouse Gases emissions reduction limits the range of policy instruments to carbon taxation, tradable carbon emissions permits or dedicated mitigation and adaptation funds. This also hinders the integration of climate objectives in non-climate policies. Analyzing impacts of development policies on Green Gases emissions in the form of co-benefits requires to broaden the range of policy instruments and to take into account other drivers of emissions such as land dynamics. Including these mechanisms in integrated models therefore represents new scientific frontiers for integrated models in the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between science and politics in the climate regime: In search of a new model of expertise? Over the past 25 years, anthropogenic climate change has been addressed as a global environmental problem, which must be resolved by reducing human greenhouse gas emissions through a global agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN. The role of sciences in the construction of the problem is essential and is aptly summarized by the claim that "science speaks truth to power," with science and politics assumed to be hermetically separated. Although this "linear model" is in fact largely inadequate to account for the much more complex links between climate science and politics, notably within the IPCC, it has long been hegemonic, leading to debates focused on science rather than political responses. This dominant approach has been undermined by the failure of international negotiations: it is now clear that scientific consensus does not suffice to produce significant global political decisions. It is now evident that climate change is a geopolitical, economic, and development problem as much as an environmental one. As the Paris CoP approaches, in a phase of political uncertainties and discussions around the need for a change of paradigm in negotiations, our paper examines critically the evolving relationship between science and politics in the climate regime, revisiting the role of science and discussing emerging critiques, proposals, and perspectives on models of expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change controversies in France are often reduced to popular scientists denying human responsibility in global warming. Such polarization overshadows, however, a wide range of problems, actors and positions. In this paper, we show first that the visibility of these controversies is closely linked to the evolution of the climate issue as a public problem, which has moved through several stages over the past twenty years. The most recent period is characterized by an increase in the diversity of controversies and of “dissonant voices”. Part of the disagreements are about climate sciences (especially climate models) and involve the recognition and stabilization of a new disciplinary field and new relationships between science and politics. Another kind of controversy concerns the domain and boundaries of climate sciences, as climate change issues reshape neighbouring scientific fields and confront different epistemic cultures. Finally, political and philosophical disagreements sparked by anthropogenic climate change go beyond the usual conflict between pro and anti- environmentalism, and also concern the very definition of the climate issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]