Les atolls sont-ils menacés de disparaître ?

National audienc

Mondialisation touristique et environnement dans les petites îles tropicales

La mondialisation touristique a souvent été stigmatisée pour ses effets négatifs sur l’environnement. L’objectif de cette contribution est de montrer, d’une part, que les dégradations dues au tourisme ne sont pas forcément spécifiques, et d’autre part, que cette activité a des impacts contrastés voire opposés qui invitent à bannir toute généralisation. Les caractéristiques physiques des espaces insulaires, terres de contraintes, et les stratégies politiques de leurs dirigeants déterminent tout autant que les exigences propres à cette activité la nature et l’ampleur des dégâts environnementaux. Des exemples pris dans les océans Indien et Pacifique ainsi que dans la Caraïbe illustrent bien la diversité des effets du tourisme mondial sur l’environnement.Tourism globalization and environment in tropical small islands. The adverse effects of tourism globalization on environment has currently been stated. The purpose of this paper is to show at first that the impacts of tourism are neither specific, nor entirely negative. They can also be very different and even opposite from one place to another. On a second hand, this paper will show that two other factors play a major role as they determine both the nature and the level of environmental degradations due to tourism : physical constraints which characterize small island states and more particularly low lying islands, and development policies. Some examples choosen in the Indian and Pacific oceans and in the Lesser Antilles highlight the complexity of tourism impacts on environment degradation

La qualité des plages au cœur des enjeux de développement : La situation des îles de l’océan Indien

La qualité des plages s’inscrit au cœur des enjeux de développement des petites îles tropicales en raison d’une part, de la place qu’elle occupe dans les stratégies de promotion touristique, et d’autre part, de l’importance que prend le littoral dans les pratiques récréatives et touristiques émergentes des populations locales. Dans ce contexte, l’objectif de cet article est de présenter les résultats d’une évaluation réalisée dans différentes îles des archipels des Seychelles et des Mascareignes, et de mettre en évidence la relation qui existe entre la qualité des plages, leurs attributs naturels et les politiques d’aménagement et de gestion des acteurs publics et privés.Today, the quality of the tropical beaches is closely linked to development challenges for two main reasons. At first, because sandy beaches play an important role in tourism development policies, and secondly because of the emergence of the touristic and recreative activities of the local communities. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to expose the results of an assessment which was done in the Seychelles and Mascarene islands and to highlight the relationship which can be observed between beach quality, natural assets and the strategies of public and private actors

Les îles-hôtels, terrain d’application privilégié des préceptes du développement durable : l’exemple des Seychelles et des Maldives (Océan Indien)

Les fortes contraintes de développement auxquelles se heurtent les petits États insulaires concourent tout autant que leur fonctionnement systémique à limiter leur essor économique et à remettre en cause la viabilité des projets touristiques qu’ils accueillent. L’île-hôtel constitue ainsi un terrain d’étude privilégié des fortes interactions qui s’établissent, sur un espace exigu, entre environnement, société et économie. C’est à ce titre qu’elle constitue un laboratoire pertinent pour initier une réflexion théorique sur la durabilité du développement et pour en évaluer la soutenabilité au travers d’une méthodologie innovante. Appliquée à 12 îles-hôtels des Seychelles et des Maldives, cet outil d’évaluation permet de montrer la diversité des situations et d’analyser les projets qui ont échoué.The strong development constraints and the interrelations which set up between environment, society and economy in the small island states obstruct the viability of tourism projects. Therefore, resort islands can be considered as interesting territories for sustainable development studies. The main purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology so as to assess their development sustainability. Twelve case studies are presented which show the diversity of the situations which can be observed in Maldives and Seychelles. The analysis of the results help understanding why some tourism projects have failed

Assessing the impacts of shoreline hardening on beach response to hurricanes: Saint-Barthélemy, Lesser Antilles

International audienc

Trajectories of exposure and vulnerability of small islands to climate change

The authors thank the funding and logistical supports for the Back to the Future workshop (France, October 8–10, 2013) provided by the Corderie Royale de Rochefort, the Regional Council of Poitou-Charentes, the Conservatoire du Littoral, the Fondation de France, the Club Méditerranée, the Communautés d'agglomération de La Rochelle et du Pays Rochefortais, and the Université populaire du Littoral Charentais 17 and the French National Research Agency (CapAdapt project, ANR-2011-JSH1-004 01 and STORISK project, ANR-15-CE03-0003).This article advocates for a dynamic and comprehensive understanding of vulnerability to climate-related environmental changes in order to feed the design of adaptation future pathways. It uses the trajectory of exposure and vulnerability (TEV) approach that it defines as ‘storylines of driving factors and processes that have influenced past and present territorial system exposure and vulnerability to impacts associated with climate variability and change.’ The study is based on the analysis of six peer-reviewed Pacific island case studies covering various geographical settings (high islands vs low-lying reef islands, urban vs rural) and hazards associated with climate variability and change; that addressed the interactions between natural and anthropogenic driving factors; and adopted multidecadal past-to-present approaches. The findings emphasize that most urban and rural reef and high islands have undergone increasing exposure and vulnerability as a result of major changes in settlement and demographic patterns, lifestyles and economies, natural resources availability, and environmental conditions. The article highlights three generic and successive periods of change in the studied islands’ TEV: from geopolitical and political over the colonization-to-political independence period; to demographic, socio-economic, and cultural from the 1960s to the 1980s; culminating in the dominance of demographic, socio-economic, cultural, and environmental drivers since the 1980s. Based on these empirical insights, the article emphasizes the existence of anthropogenic-driven path-dependency effects in TEV, thus arguing for the analysis of the temporal dimensions of exposure and vulnerability to be a prerequisite for science to be able to inform policy- and decision-making processes toward robust adaptation pathways.PostprintPeer reviewe

Climate change 2014 : impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability

Current and future climate-related drivers of risk for small islands during the 21st century include sea level rise (SLR), tropical and extratropical cyclones, increasing air and sea surface temperatures, and changing rainfall patterns (high confidence; robust evidence, high agreement). Current impacts associated with these changes confirm findings reported on small islands from the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) and previous IPCC assessments. The future risks associated with these drivers include loss of adaptive capacity and ecosystem services critical to lives and livelihoods in small islands.peer-reviewe

Co-creating a coastal climate service to prioritise investments in erosion prevention and sea-level rise adaptation in the Maldives

While the prioritisation of scarce resources for climate adaptation is becoming a priority for low and middle income countries, the climate service literature addressing adaptation prioritisation decisions is scarce. This paper contributes to filling this gap by presenting a co-creation process carried out in the Maldives among representatives of government, civil society and researchers. Together, we identified the need to improve a ranking method currently used by the Maldivian government to prioritise islands for investments in erosion prevention. As a solution we developed a layered index. The first layer of this index captures the objective dimension of the problem through an erosion hazard subindex, using the three variables wave energy, reef health and reef flat minimum width. The second layer captures the normative dimension through a multi-criteria analysis using the erosion hazard subindex as one criterion next to other stakeholder selected criteria such as critical infrastructure, economic activity, per capita income and the potential to house additional people that resettle from riskier places as sea-level rise progresses. Results of this new ranking method show that socioeconomic criteria were considered more important by the stakeholders than the biophysical criterion of erosion hazard. Among the top-ranked islands are many regional centres but also less populous islands that have a large potential to house additional people. Lessons learnt from the co-creation process highlight the importance of assembling interdisciplinarity teams, fostering mutual learning among project participants, and designing research projects that do not prescribe upfront the exact problems to be addressed and methods to be applied.The work of this paper has been funded through the Projects INSeaPTION and PROTECT. INSeaPTION is part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by FORMAS (SE), BMBF (DE), BMWFW (AT), IFD (DK), MINECO (ES), ANR (FR) with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462). PROTECT is funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 869304.Peer reviewe

Sea level rise risks and societal adaptation benefits in low-lying coastal areas

Sea level rise (SLR) will increase adaptation needs along low-lying coasts worldwide. Despite centuries of experience with coastal risk, knowledge about the effectiveness and feasibility of societal adaptation on the scale required in a warmer world remains limited. This paper contrasts end-century SLR risks under two warming and two adaptation scenarios, for four coastal settlement archetypes (Urban Atoll Islands, Arctic Communities, Large Tropical Agricultural Deltas, Resource-Rich Cities). We show that adaptation will be substantially beneficial to the continued habitability of most low-lying settlements over this century, at least until the RCP8.5 median SLR level is reached. However, diverse locations worldwide will experience adaptation limits over the course of this century, indicating situations where even ambitious adaptation cannot sufficiently offset a failure to effectively mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions