[copie] APRES

The previous Ittecop project PADDLe (Viable management partnerships for rights-of-way of linear transport infrastructures) resulted in the proposal of a generic process for setting up and managing partnerships for the management of green verges, applicable to the 4 main types of linear transport infrastructures - LTI (roads, railways, waterways and power transmission lines), adaptable to the specificities of each scenario and validated from the theoretical point of view by the relevant stakeholders.

Within this process of societal innovation, the APRES project constitutes the next stage, which allows entry into the validation of the solution through its experimentation in an operational environment (set-up and management phases of partnerships). It combines empirical and theoretical approaches. Its main objective, through the creation from scratch of 4 partnerships for the 4 main types of LTI, is to provide experimental pilots, in order, on the one hand to validate/strengthen the methodological proposal on an operational level, and on the other hand to fuel the rest of the innovation process, thanks to the partnerships which will operate during the project and beyond.

To achieve these pilots, within the area of the Brittany – Pays de la Loire regions, 4 LTI operators (respectively DIR Ouest, Région Bretagne, SNCF Réseau, RTE Ouest) are supported by the APRES team to set up and maintain, 4 partnerships according to the robustness criteria identified during the PADDLe project. A panel of potential partnerships is formed from operators' proposals and by cartographic research: interest of potential sites, definition of a relevant ecological project, identification of suitable environmental partners. In the framework of APRES, the ecological projects of the partnerships are defined in relation to the interest in wild pollinating insects.

The 4 cases deemed the most robust are carried out with the local stakeholders concerned: finalization of the ecological project and drafting of contracts (first year), monitoring of the progress of the partnerships (relations between stakeholders) and monitoring of the ecological effects of the actions implemented (2nd and 3rd years). As the aim of partnerships for the management of green dependencies is to become a common practice, the observation of ecological effects presupposes the use of indicators within the reach of non-specialists in flora and fauna. A second objective of APRES is therefore to verify the feasibility of using the RENATU (Ittecop 2017 program) and SPIPOLL (OPIE) indicators by local actors in the rights-of-way of the partnerships created by/for the project.

The APRES team supports local stakeholders in partnerships for 2 years (monitoring, progress updates, local working groups) to organize feedback and strengthen the general model for forming partnerships for the management of green verges. The partnerships formed and their application sites serve as demonstrators for stakeholders at regional, national and international scale.