QUANTITATIVE WATER MANAGEMENT OF THE DURANCE RIVER: TOWARDS A NEW RESOURCE ALLOCATION? ; Dynamique territoriale de la gestion quantitative de l'eau en Durance : vers une nouvelle répartition de la ressource ?
The Durance River is the main water resource for Provence-Alpes-Côte-d"Azur Region. Many water uses have occurred for centuries: irrigation of agricultural lands, supply of drinking water, hydroelectricity, industrial and recreational activities into river or under artificial reservoirs. More recently, environmental concerns have led public policies to take aquatic ecosystems needs into account. To resolve these issues, sometimes conflicting, a lot of management plans have been implemented at several geographic scales.This PhD dissertation consists in studying the design process of five water management plans and of the associated social system in order to improve our understanding of allocation measures between water uses. To do it, the analytical framework combines three levels: actors, interactions between actors and their context.The analysis of territorial water management dynamics in the Durance river catchment leads to consider an incremental change into two steps. The first one consists in the territorial implementation of French water policy into "balanced" water management plans with measures in favor of aquatic ecosystems. The community that stood out from this running process leads to a second step: the recognition of water uses which have no water rights. This PhD also illustrates how common-pool problems are successfully resolved by locally devised arrangements and the significance of climatic events in the shift from a "hydraulic" management towards a "balanced" one. ; La Durance constitue la principale ressource en eau de la région Provence-Alpes-Côte-d"Azur. De nombreux usages de la ressource en eau se sont développés au cours des siècles sur le bassin de la Durance : irrigation des terres agricoles, alimentation en eau des populations, hydroélectricité, activités industrielles et récréatives en rivière ou sur les retenues artificielles. Plus tardivement, les préoccupations environnementales ont conduit les politiques publiques à s"intéresser aux besoins des milieux aquatiques. Pour répondre à ...