Contenu du sommaire

Facing climatic change in the Arctic The Arctic is a key area for observing and understanding past and future climatic change. During the 20th century, meteorological data demonstrate a more important warming than the global average, but this warming has been neither continuous in time nor homogeneous in space. After a strong surge in the beginning of the 20th century, a trend in decreasing temperatures has been observed from the 40's, which ended more or less rapidly according to the different sectors ; opposite in tendencies have been observed among different sectors, particularly between the European Arctic sector and the West Greenland and Eastern Canadian Arctic's. A strong warming has begun in the 70's to the 90's in the different sectors, it has provoked a noticeable decrease in size and thickness of the ice-sheet in the most recent years. This warming is also related to very important changes in indices of the North-Atlantic Oscillation and Arctic Oscillation, the most prevailing modes of climatic variability in the Arctic area. All climate models foresee a continuation of this warming during the next decades, but seem to fail in simulating the regional differences between the different Arctic sectors, and the variability related to the NAO and AO processes as well. This hinders from a precise anticipation of climate change impacts on natural environments and on human activities in the Arctic.

Urban vulnerability and Mediterranean flooding : a new geographical approach Risk and urban disasters are complex phenomena. This complexity results from the notion of disaster as a vulnerability-hazard product, and the “domino effects” it generates. A disaster cannot only be limited to one or the other of its components, in so doing the system would be studied neither as a whole nor in its complexity. Whether they are of natural, technological, economical, or sanitary origin, hazard is mainly what is studied. On the other hand, studies relating to the vulnerability are more recent and exceptional ; research combining hazard and vulnerability is even more so. This article first proposes to introduce some steps that could be used by geographers in order to study the vulnerability and its critical stages. Then, in using a modelling and simulation method, called the “dynamic system”, it proposes an urban disaster model in relation to Mediterranean flooding. This model associates the various components of the disaster, namely, the hazard, the vulnerability and the “domino effects”. It is also enriched by a module of urban circulation. In this article, only the modules of vulnerability and vehicles flows will be subject of a detailed study. Lastly, in a third part, we present different graphic models representing the system of vulnerability as well as the advantages and drawbacks of various systemic approaches.

At the crossroad between territory and network : the paradoxical notion of Region in Germany. Is Region a deterritorializating device From the end of the 1990s onwards, German spatial planning experiences have been enhancing the value of the notion of Region as a key tool in “bottom-up spatial planning” ; thus moving on from Raumplanung (spatial planning) to Raumentwicklung (spatial development). However, the region remains ambivalent, standing as it is between territories and networks, formal and informal structures. There are two identifiable types of regions in Germany : the region as defined by spatial planning and the region in general. The first one (Raumordnungsregion when applied to the Bund, and Planungsregion when applied to the Länder) is an external planning instrument, thus coordinating local actors and their projects. This is grounded upon the territorial divisions within each Land. Regions in general (Region) are spaces intended for local action, founded upon reticular patterns of cooperation rather than upon territorial ones, such as urban networks, regional development concepts, etc. But local/regional development rests upon these two interweaving/interacting entities. The play on scales and the ambivalent relations between networks and territories in regional development are at the core of this article. Eventually, this leads us to a paradoxical form of dynamism. On the one hand, the dismissal of territorial rigidity and the choice of weak, thematic and reticular cooperation seem to be prevailing. But on the other hand, the need to go back to the notion of territory is still felt, if not always accepted, by local actors. The region would first be used as a deterritorializating device at the stage of regional development projects, before being turned into a reterritorializating tool afterwards, when implementing actions and projects. I will use a few national (German) and regional examples (the spatial planning region of South-West Thuringe) to illustrate these ideas.

Peasant visions of environmental in Ivory Coast The bioclimatic conditions in the forest-and-savannah-dominated Côte d'Ivoire country have been subjected to a strong decrease in rainfall since the Seventies and correlatively the rain cover forest has been strongly affected. The climatic uncertainty and the decrease in the forest areas lead the farmers to adopt regulating and preserving strategies. While rural population don't have solution front of climatic variability, because of the unpredictable of climatic variability, new environment perceptions lead to better management of good land. Regardless of the region, such strategies aim to manage wet pits, formerly abandoned, especially lowlands, extension of new crops and adoption of new varieties less sensitive to the climatic risk... Beyond uncertainties in the disturbed political situation in the country, these evolutions represent trends contributing in definition of a new relationship of rural societies with their environment and territory.