Social, Economic, and Political Stakes of River Restoration: A Dynamic Research Field Facing Several Challenges to Strengthen Links with Practitioners

Résumé En

This chapter presents the different perspectives proposed in this book to address the current humanities and social sciences (HSS) issues of river restoration. It highlights the way social, economic, and political perspectives contribute to scientific thinking in the field of river restoration and questions these contributions in terms of operational and methodological issues. These contributions are read along four axes. (i) River restoration raises thinking in environmental ethics and questions the links between societies and rivers. This thinking inevitably leads to considering – e.g. within the theoretical framework of political ecology – the political stakes and their underlying socioeconomic power relations. (ii) River restoration is tackled as a sociopolitical process. The governance of policies and projects is the subject of much attention and is most often approached critically, particularly with regard to participation. (iii) The assessment of the sociopolitical and economic effects – positive or negative – of river restoration is at the heart of several works. They mobilize a diversity of conceptual frameworks, such as the valuation of ecosystem services, the “total economic value,” and the “sense of place.” (iv) Finally, if HSS are now well present in the scientific community that focuses on river restoration, researchers face several challenges to strengthen their links with restoration practitioners in order to improve river restoration practices and policies. These challenges are detailed.