[copie] POLICLOTe

The constant expansion of fences, their diversity and their omnipresence in the landscape lead to risks of various ecological impacts at all scales. They increase the fragmentation of habitats, modify the behaviour of species and cause injury or accidental trapping. While the assessment and prevention of these potential ecological impacts are still underdeveloped, public and private initiatives are emerging. In fact, scientific knowledge and feedback from experience are already making it possible to propose technical recommendations for preventing these impacts, covering the development of a security strategy for each site, possible material options and alternatives to fencing. The cumulative impact of each new fence with those already in place also raises the question of how they can be assessed and taken into account on a regional scale.

Based on this observation, POLICLOTe aims to understand the potential obstacles and levers to the organised territorial governance of fences and the integrated management of their ecological impact on territories. The project is based on the hypothesis that, despite the existing regulatory tools, there is no effective territorial governance of fences, due to the presence of political, cultural and social obstacles among the various stakeholders to the implementation of fence governance.
This project proposes to carry out a survey of fences around current or planned Transport and Energy Infrastructures (TIEs), taking into account current or future fences on the rights of way of these TIEs as well as on the neighbouring territories.

The research will focus on geographical areas centred on current or planned TIES, taking into account both 1) the fencing of the TIEs (or the problems of ecological continuity and animal collisions with traffic if it is not fenced), and 2) the local dynamics of fencing in the areas crossed. These combined perspectives will help us to understand how the actions and positions of the various stakeholders in the territory interact with the issues and daily lives of others, and thus to understand the driving forces behind the governance of fencing. In the specific case of TIEs fences, the question of their degree of integration into sectoral governance/policies will also be considered alongside that of territorial governance.

As an applied research project, the goal is to support or anticipate the development of technical reference guidelines dedicated to a proven factor of ecological impact (in this case, fences), through a socio-political approach to the brakes, obstacles and opportunities for the implementation of territorial governance by public action. In so doing, by taking fences as a political object, the project aims to open up a more general debate on the governance of socio-technical systems that have an ecological footprint on territories.
The POLICLOTe research project will last 36 months.