diversity of links established between residents and rivers forges diverse expectations with regard to restoration actions. They also demonstrate that a restoration project will first be a political project, before being a technical one. This political project implies discussing both the diversity of links to the river and the diversity of expectations when defining restoration objectives (Wohl et al. 2005; Baker et al. 2014).
1.4.2 Studying the political stakes of river restoration
The first studies addressing the political dimension of river restoration were published in the 2000s, often in connection with analysis of the effects of restoration on human–river interactions (e.g. Tunstall et al. 2000; Connelly et al. 2002; Junker et al. 2007). They often involve both survey methods and literature reviews (see Box 1.3), and are based on the idea that environmental policies are the result of power plays between different interests (Baker and Eckerberg 2013). In fact, many policy approaches to river restoration are devoted to the issue of arbitration between different interests involved in decision‐making. Which restoration objectives should be prioritized? How to intervene? On which sites should we prioritize action? The answers to these questions probably vary according to the actors questioned and the governance methods adopted for the project, but also more broadly according to the territorial context in which the project takes place. Thus, behind seemingly technical issues there are in fact significant and influential social and political processes that are at the heart of political approaches to restoration. For Light and Higgs (1996), the political stakes of restoration can be approached from two perspectives, often complementary. The first relates to the choices that are made, the reasons why they are made, and the manner in which they are made, and is referred to as “politics in restoration.” In the field of river restoration, there are therefore many publications related to governance and stakeholder participation. The second approach is the “politics of restoration.” It brings together work that looks at the way in which restoration approaches fit into further political, social, and economic mechanisms beyond the immediate realm. These two approaches examine the value of restoration policy (Light and Higgs 1996), questioning what is a “good” or “bad” restoration project, particularly from the perspective of legitimacy (who makes the decisions and in what capacity?) or equity (are the decisions fair and made in the name of the common good?).
Box 1.3 Documentation sources: material that is little valued in river restoration research
While documentation sources are often used in societal studies, they are rarely mobilized as foundational materials for research work. They are most often complementary to survey methods (e.g. Buijs 2009; Barthélémy and Armani 2015; Heldt et al. 2016; Druschke et al. 2017), to provide elements of interpretation, confirmation, or discussion of the information obtained during interviews. The nature of the documents is often little discussed and the methods of their analysis are rarely explained; they are most often qualitative.
However, document sources are valuable for providing information on river restoration projects. The most used are policy documents or administrative documents produced by national, regional, or local administrations, and operational documents related to projects (planning documents, technical reports, and communication documents). These documents contain technical and scientific information that (for example) has contributed to the inventories of projects carried out by environmental scientists to evaluate restoration practices and their effects on river ecology since the 2000s (e.g. Bernhardt et al. 2007). The bibliographical study shows that these documents are also more mobilized to answer the societal questions raised by river restoration approaches. For example, operational documents are sources providing data on project costs for economic studies (e.g. Alam 2008; Carah et al. 2014; Langhans et al. 2014). Above all, they provide key material for understanding the political processes at work in restoration processes (e.g. Tanaka 2006; Gerlak et al. 2009; Lee and Choi 2012; Guerrin 2015). Their analysis makes it possible to trace the genealogy of a restoration project and to identify the role played by the various stakeholders in its implementation, their positions in a political sense, and their strategies for action. Some studies, less numerous, focus more specifically on how public opinion reacts to certain river restoration approaches (e.g. Bark et al. 2016; Heldt et al. 2016; Druschke et al. 2017). For this purpose, they mobilize other documentation sources, such as the news media and particularly the press.
1.4.2.1 A focus on stakeholders of river restoration: the participatory approach
According to Szałkiewicz et al. (2018), in Europe “52% of the projects analyzed have been designed and implemented without the participation of local stakeholders.” Whether actively or passively concerned by a decision, the individuals or collectives (group or organization) that make up society nevertheless have interests that may be positively or negatively affected by its execution (or nonexecution). These interests often determine their relationship to the river and their stance on restoration. In policy approaches to river restoration, stakeholders are at the heart of the discussion (Figure 1.9), and the question is often to determine which river restoration stakeholders are or should be involved in decision‐making (Junker et al. 2007). Political approaches to river restoration are often strongly biased toward broad participation. According to various authors, the river restoration decision, as well as its evaluation, is best made collectively (Jähnig et al. 2011; Deffner and Haase 2018). This positioning places river restoration at the center of a democratic debate. Indeed, it considers that a restoration project, insofar as it creates value (Light and Higgs 1996), must produce a value that is shared or at least collectively debated if the project is to have relevance and social legitimacy (Deffner and Haase 2018). The river is considered a common good around which a “community” coalesces. This community is made up of individuals who often have different or even divergent interests, but who come together around a shared project. By placing the democratic issue at the heart of restoration, political approaches make the river a tool for living together. In this sense, political action cannot be taken independently of the social and cultural contexts in which it takes place.
Figure 1.9 Lexicon specific to international scientific publications dealing with the political stakes of river restoration.
The form of the democratic debate is also at the center of considerations; representative democracy giving expert groups legitimacy to act is questioned. More and more authors are placing participatory approaches at the center of their work and considering the involvement of different stakeholders in the project; they approach the political dimension of river restoration from a governance perspective. According to Mansourian (2017, p. 402), “governance determines who takes decisions, and how these decisions are made and applied.” Some of these studies are interested in the satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, of stakeholders regarding the degree and manner in which they were involved in the project (Junker et al. 2007; Heldt et al. 2016). Others propose a monitoring of governance, and analyze, often in a critical manner, the way in which the interplay of actors within the loop has been able to influence decisions (Tanaka 2006; Lee and Choi 2012; Hong and Chun 2018). Thus, within the framework of the restoration of the Anyangcheon river in Seoul (South Korea), Hong and Chun (2018) were able to highlight power asymmetries between the different stakeholders of the project that contributed to prioritizing, in the choice of restoration objectives, scientific values to the detriment of nonscientific values, such as cultural, aesthetic, social, or educational ones. The importance of the leadership of certain stakeholders, endowed with varied influence and capacity, for driving the concretization and orientation of projects is often mentioned (Lee and Choi 2012; Barthélémy and Armani 2015).
1.4.2.2