Description du projet
Étude de l’eau, du climat et des infrastructures
Le continent européen est parcouru par plusieurs millions de kilomètres de cours d’eaux et compte plus d’un million de lacs. Le changement climatique (modification des valeurs moyennes de la température, des précipitations et de l’intensité des aléas climatiques) met les infrastructures hydrauliques de l’UE à rude épreuve. Le projet CANALS, financé par l’UE, va étudier de nouvelles façons de mobiliser les connaissances sur les infrastructures hydrauliques afin de promouvoir une prise de décision adaptative. Il vise à mettre au point des moyens transdisciplinaires de fédérer une «communauté de pairs étendue» rassemblant les parties prenantes du domaine de l’eau à des fins d’élaboration de politiques. Dans la perspective du projet, les cultures sont considérées à la fois comme des pratiques et des systèmes de symboles et de significations. Le projet avance notamment que les interprétations actuelles de l’eau, du climat et des infrastructures ne parviennent pas à dissiper les nouvelles incertitudes dues au changement climatique. Il convient également de prendre dûment en considération les cultures de l’eau.
Objectif
The changing climate is disrupting fresh water infrastructures. Dominant technocratic systems of knowledge and practice supporting water infrastructures in Europe are being undermined by rapid changes, which introduce new uncertainties and contest old securities. We need novel ways of mobilising knowledge for water infrastructures that readmits communities’ diverse cultural interactions with water to promote adaptive decision-making.
The CANALS project begins from three claims; (i) that current understandings of water, climate and infrastructures struggle to address emerging uncertainties due to climate change; (ii) that a proper regard for water cultures is needed to overcome these obstacles; particularly by (iii) extending the ‘peer communities’ of diverse knowledge-holders. CANALS’ water culture perspective understands cultures as both practices and systems of symbols and meanings. It recognises the hybrid character of water, which exists independently of humans and at the same time is culturally enacted through human practices. It also sees infrastructures as social practices connecting people and objects in the world in socio-material relations. A water-cultural perspective thus better captures the complex processes around water infrastructures in the context of challenges posed by climate change.
Adopting an innovative water culture perspective, CANALS will first make visible the spectrum of knowledges and practices used by different social groups for maintaining infrastructures. Going further, the project will develop transdisciplinary ways of convening an ‘extended peer community’ of water stakeholders, to together appraise the quality of their water knowledges for policy-making.
CANALS creates the conditions for me to advance the scholarship on water infrastructures; and expand my expertise and experience with the empirical social science concepts and methods crucial for unlocking these insights and developing my future academic career in this field.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinateur
5020 Bergen
Norvège