Regulatory, accompanying, and collective governance? The challenges of re-orientating environmental-economic interdependencies in two French ports

Abstract

ABSTRACT How small/medium-sized (SM) commercial ports act politically matters for local ecological transformation facing increasing climate and socio-environmental failures and dilemmas. In this spirit, we compared the environmental public action of two SM ports in southwestern France – La Rochelle and Bayonne – facing two sets of dilemmas: (i) how to tackle problems emerging from past choices; (ii) how to resolve issues arising from ‘choosing the future today’. Whereas global scientific assessments highlight regulatory, accompanying and collective approaches as high confidence ones towards ecological transformation, more technologically resourced scenarios (without economic behavioural change governance) are available to SM ports. Furthermore, although political processes of territorialisation, democratisation and ecologisation have reconfigured environmental authority for both public actors and SM ports in France, there is nothing inevitable about how different categories of public (and private) actor may work together. Our results reflect these tensions. Both SM ports have engaged to institutionalise regulatory, accompanying and collective environmental public action, and portray new approaches as indicative of their acknowledged responsibility. Nevertheless, important contradictions muddy the ecologisation trajectories their key actors claim to be taking. Overall, the study highlights that transformed governance alone does not guarantee that actors have fully embarked upon a newly transformative trajectory.