From culture and agriculture to water management and natural landscapes, French regions are at the forefront of the climate transition and will have to adapt over the coming decades. Matthieu Goar discusses these challenges in an article on the Le Monde website.
Global warming is challenging France’s regional and cultural identity
To understand climate change, there are curves, warning stripes – graphs made of colored bands symbolizing rising temperatures – and maps, each one more alarmist than the last. But there’s also a sensory dimension. The graphs, with their multiple gradations of red, are already being felt in the flesh by the millions of French people who are seeing their land change.
In Burgundy, the harvest date is continually being pushed forward. On average, it’s a month earlier than in the Middle Ages, when wine-growing monks religiously inscribed the day of the first harvest. In Brittany and Normandy, pioneers have been replanting vines. In mountainous uplands, business circles are wavering between converting to summer tourism based on pastoralism and investing in snow cannons. Beech forests are gradually disappearing south of the Seine.
Then, there are the animals that we’re seeing less of and others that are moving up from the south, like tiger mosquitoes. In Ariège (southwestern France), Asian hornets are attacking bees at altitudes of up to 1,200 meters.
“Geography is the product of a natural environment and a historical heritage. The climate transition is turning things upside down,” summarized Magali Reghezza-Zitt, geographer and member of the French Climate High Council. “In the long term, what will become of the salt marshes of Guérande [Loire-Atlantique on the western coast], the maritime marshes of Mont-Saint-Michel, the Camargue, the wine-growing regions, the mountain fir forests? France is already changing a great deal in terms of landscapes, and this is going to accelerate.”
In the south, a push to reconcile tourism and the environment
Only just redrawn by the 2015 NOTRe (New Territorial Organization of the Republic) law, will the regions have to reinvent themselves in the coming decades? Following the NOTRe administrative and cartographic evolution, the large, regrouped regional entities have been working to find a common identity, sometimes redesignating themselves with names linked to history or geography: Midi-Pyrénées-Languedoc-Roussillon has become Occitanie; Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur transformed itself into the Sud region. The future climate, however, is likely to change things once again.
Coastal erosion is leading to serious questions in some seaside resorts. Other changes once seemed more distant but have become very present since 2022. Are heatwaves going to make major cities less attractive at certain times of the year? Will the sun – the Mediterranean coast’s main asset – become an enemy?
“I told you there’d be water in Lac de Serre-Ponçon this year,” joked Renaud Muselier, president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. In 2022, with its extremely low water level, this artificial lake became one of the symbols of the drought. Muselier boasts of having put in place a 100% green budget, with an €80 million boost devoted to trains (€480 million for a fleet of 750 trains), the management of nine regional parks, the electrification of cruise ship stopovers and the development of drones to monitor fire outbreaks. He is confident that his region will acclimatize.
“We’re still France’s number one tourist destination, admittedly behind Paris, but that doesn’t matter. My ambition is for my 5 million inhabitants to be able to live in a way that protects their environment while welcoming all those tourists. I believe in human intelligence and the ability to adapt,” said Muselier, president of a pilot region for environmental planning. “In Israel, 98% of wastewater is recycled, so we have a bit of a margin. We’ve never had much water (…) According to scientists, there will be snow until 2050 in two-thirds of the resorts, which leaves us some time to launch studies to work out how to develop our mountains.”
Closer ties with scientists
Established as energy transition leaders by laws passed in 2014 and 2015, the regions have been forging closer ties with scientists. Nouvelle-Aquitaine, for example, has created AcclimaTerra, a regional “IPCC” made up of experts. Such structures also exist in Normandy, Île-de-France and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. Brittany has set up a Breizh COP and a Breton High Council for Climate. The aim is to help decision-makers build their regional plans for sustainable development and territorial equality.
“All regions surveyed show a strong awareness of climate issues. However, their adoption still varies from one regional authority to another,” explained the Haut Conseil Pour le Climat (High Council for Climate), in its 2020 annual report.
But the changes to come are of a kind that could threaten centuries-old cultures in the decades to come. It’s a threat to the very image of the French regions. In Brittany, temperatures in 2022 led to a drop of around 30% in the harvests of two signature crops, onions and artichokes. “There are major questions and an imperative to defend our territory’s agriculture, something which is very much linked to grasslands and therefore grazing animals,” said Loïg Chesnais-Girard, Brittany’s regional president. “My obsession is that Brittany should not become 100% cereal land, or have corn everywhere. We must stick to diverse agriculture. What would be the point of our importing more carbon-intensive milk from elsewhere?”
In Normandy, a region of hedged farmland facing the sea, the evolution of the coastline is a cause for concern. “We might say that a few degrees more are a good thing for our region’s climate, but there are already places where the cliffs are collapsing,” said Hervé Morin, president of the Normandy region.
During the summer 2022 heatwave, the president of the Manche departmental council boasted on television about the usual mildness of the weather in his area. But rising sea levels are already making relocation a matter of urgency. In Quiberville (Seine-Maritime), the campsite near the beach has been moved to higher ground, several hundred meters away. “We can already see the consequences. And if we don’t want to build dykes, we’ll have to pool relocation costs, as this will be an impossible undertaking for towns and local authorities,” warned Morin.
The challenge of remaining attractive
For France’s regions, global warming also poses a challenge around remaining attractive, one of their key missions. The climate may become an increasingly important factor in choices made by companies, triggering new migrations within the country. For some years now, retirees have been turning from the Côte d’Azur to the Atlantic coast and to towns on the English Channel. In 2022, Granville (Manche) and Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) were voted the best places to live for seniors, in two different rankings based on sunshine levels.
“If people are changing their habits and their vacation spots, stakeholders will adapt, but since Covid, there’s been a global reflection on the importance of the living environment,” said Christophe Alaux, director of the Department for Attraction and New Regional Marketing at Aix-Marseille University. “The big cities that seem to be losers from residential mobility have realized that if they don’t offer a better quality of life with green spaces, a lot of people are going to leave.”
A wide-ranging study from Alaux’s department – “Imageterr” – shows the draw of the Atlantic coastline, villages and medium-sized towns. As part of this work, research managers were also able to collect 4,500 verbal inputs. “At least 600 of these interviews mention the climate. Most of them were about sunshine. But we could see the words ‘temperate’ and ‘mild’ gaining ground in around 50 statements. There’s clearly a growing concern,” concluded Alaux.
Transforming the face of cities
Like other major metropolises, Paris has commissioned a long survey from the International Organization for Migration. “Migration linked to climate change is going to transform the face of cities in the near future. Some will see their populations increase due to a rural exodus, but others will face an urban exodus,” according to the report. Lack of green spaces and air quality are among the three main reasons given for leaving the capital.
“Heat, fires, mosquitoes… Many factors could lead to a reconfiguration of the map of France,” said Reghezza-Zitt. “There are already places where people are wondering whether to rebuild after disasters such as storms Alex or Xynthia. There could be displacements within the country, and perhaps even thoughts about temporary housing where some people would spend part of the year. In France, this is going to raise the question of social inequalities, with those who are able to do this and those who can’t.”
These are changes that are forcing regions to make a great leap forward, attempting to preserve what makes their history special, while at the same time looking ahead into a climatic future that’s going to be a source of profound change. To help them adapt, national weather agency Météo-France is making a number of simulators available to economic stakeholders and politicians, such as the Drias-climat.fr and Climadiag platforms. The simulations enable them to see what the climatic situation of their regions or communes will be like at the end of the century. The French Ministry of Environmental Transition will also be reviewing its Explore 2070 simulator.
Ultimately, the idea is to be able to divide France into squares of 8 by 8 kilometers. In the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, climate change in Bayonne (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) will have nothing to do with that of Guéret, the prefecture of Creuse. “The world in 50 years time will be different everywhere, and climate is going to be the most important driver of change, even if only for tourism, agriculture. This is going to alter landscapes and probably lifestyles,” concluded paleoclimatologist Jean Jouzel. Adapt or experience climate change: it’s a huge dilemma for France’s older regions.
External link
Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 