Urban livestock farming is a topic that has received little attention in French research to date. Although these operations primarily involve endangered breeds, they have a clear productive component linked to a dual environmental objective: preserving domestic biodiversity and enhancing wet meadows. Regardless of the animal species involved (cattle, sheep, or donkeys), extensive grazing in these settings can take two forms: eco-grazing and eco-pastoralism. In Nantes metropolitan area, the use of a local cattle breed — the Nantaise — is associated with eco-pastoralism, even though the term itself is rarely used. Indeed, the goal set out in the local food system strategy is to support a micro-supply chain for products derived from these cows, which graze on many of the area's wet meadows. The initiative is structured by L’Étable Nantaise – an entity that is both an association and a multi-stakeholder cooperative (SCIC) – involving citizens. As Vertou example shows, from this ecosystem emerges a complex system of “commons” to be developed with a long-term perspective, addressing current societal expectations.
This study assessed the effectiveness of multifunctional half-moons (DLMF), an agro-environmental innovation implemented in 2017, in comparison with conventional half-moons (DLC), which have been used in Niger since the 1980s to restore degraded soils. The objective was to highlight the differentiated yet complementary effects of DLC and DLMF on soil properties. An experimental design was established, including three treatments: an untreated control plot, a plot equipped with DLC, and a plot equipped with DLMF. Analyses focused on the hydrodynamic and physico-chemical properties of the soils. The results show that both types of soil and water conservation structures induced a textural enrichment in fine particles, which was more pronounced under DLMF. Bulk density decreased, while porosity increased significantly, reaching +55% under DLMF compared to the control plots and +12% compared to DLC. Saturated hydraulic conductivity increased from 20 mm h⁻¹ in the control plots to 70 mm h⁻¹ under DLC and 95 mm h⁻¹ under DLMF, confirming the superior performance of DLMF (p= 0.002). Soil chemical properties improved by more than 200% for organic matter, cation exchange capacity (CEC), and exchangeable bases. However, DLC showed better performance in terms of chemical and biological enrichment than DLMF, particularly for carbon, organic matter, and nitrogen (p
This paper outlines the origins and methodology of the participatory research network "CoCultures," which brings together gardeners, market gardeners, associations, local authorities, and researchers in the Occitanie region of France. These individuals are engaged in a collaborative approach to the co-creation and experimentation of vegetable intercropping (VI) in urban areas. The objective is to shed light on the interplay between agrobiological and sociological approaches in the network-based study of VI adoption dynamics. To robustly document the agrobiological aspects, the experiment is conducted on approximately one hundred sites with varying soil, climate, and farming practices. Given the crucial role of access to information and social capital in the adoption of new agricultural practices, this paper analyzes how market gardeners and gardeners appropriate and understand VI. Questions concerning soil health and its microbiota bring together stakeholders involved in global health: biodiversity, plant health, food quality, and ultimately, individual health. Following the concepts definition, agrobiological and sociological methods are presented. The convergences and divergences observed between the concerns of stakeholders involved in implementing conservation agriculture, as well as between different disciplines, are then discussed in order to consider hybrid indicators of conservation agriculture sustainability.
The rapid expansion of Tahoua is jeopardising sustainable access to drinking water, highlighting the need to reconcile urbanisation and water management. The aim of this study is to analyse the link between urban sprawl and access to water in the city of Tahoua. The methodological approach is based on a mixed methodology combining secondary data collection (documentary research) and primary data collection (direct field observation, a survey of 170 households in five peripheral neighbourhoods, and interviews with key stakeholders). The research shows that spatial expansion exceeds population growth, making it difficult for public water networks to provide effective coverage. Poor management and limited financial resources exacerbate the situation, leading to a dependence on private boreholes. The result is increased health vulnerability, particularly in peripheral neighbourhoods.
Saharan wetlands constitute essential ecological infrastructures within agro-pastoral territories. The Tamda wetland, located 15 km southeast of Ouled Djellal (Algeria), is an endorheic depression that is temporarily flooded and subject to a Saharan climate (
“Sacrifice zones” is a term that has evolved to refer to sites of concentrated environmental hazards resulting from extractive forms of land use. Much of the current literature explores the establishment of such places in Latin America and the United States, where legacies of settler colonialism interact with extant patterns of socioeconomic inequality and sociopolitical marginalization, but what drives their creation in Europe? This study examines three cases (a Roma community in Sajokaza, Hungary, the Kallak mining project in Sami lands, and the Jadar Valley lithium mining project in Serbia) to offer a theoretical analysis of how sacrifice zones are identified and constructed along the peripheries of power. Exploring economic drivers and socio-political dynamics, this paper seeks to understand both the commonalities and differences between places and communities marked for ecological violence.
Growing concerns about climate change and geopolitical risks highlight the need to transition away from fossil fuels. Increasingly, scholars and policy-makers are becoming more attentive to justice concerns associated with such an energy transition. This paper seeks to contribute to the emerging body of scholarship that is “spatializing energy justice”. To do so, it puts forward the case of the German lignite-mining region of Lusatia as an entry point to unravel the mutual relations between processes of uneven development, peripheralization and energy (in)justice. Our spatially and historically sensitive analysis reveals that issues of recognitional justice lie at the heart of transition concerns in Lusatia, cascading into challenges of distributional and procedural justice. These justice concerns are deeply intertwined with the spatial process of resource peripheralization. Without addressing the root of these systemic injustices, the current energy transition risks getting locked in path-dependencies, thereby reinforcing historical power structures and imposing the transition’s burdens on already marginalised places and communities such as the Sorbs/Wends and labourers from the former German Democratic Republic. However, the current energy transition also presents an opportunity for Lusatia to reorient its development trajectory and address longstanding injustices. Achieving a just transition will require learning from past mistakes of non-recognition and misrecognition, particularly those made during German reunification, and fostering collaboratively efforts towards meaningful repair.
Biological rest periods are a fisheries management measure introduced in Côte d’Ivoire in 2023 to restore declining fish stocks. This study analyses the socio-economic effects of this measure on fishing communities in the department of Jacqueville and examines their resilience strategies. Data were collected between June and August 2025 from 130 fishermen in four localities using questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The results show that 51% of fishermen recognize an increase in fish size after the biological rest period. However, the seasonal closure leads to a significant drop in household income. Fishermen deploy several adaptation strategies. During the closure period, there is a temporary shift to agriculture (44%), services (23%), small trade (18%) and crafts (15%). To cope with this decline in income, fishermen resort to personal savings (64%) and informal borrowing (36%). These mechanisms demonstrate resilience, but remain fragile in the absence of institutional support. The study reveals a tension between ecological acceptance of the measure and its economic constraints. It highlights the need to incorporate financial compensation and social support mechanisms to ensure the sustainability of the biological rest period. These results show that the effectiveness of conservation measures depends as much on their ecological relevance as on their social and economic acceptability.
In Europe, excess mortality due to heatwaves has significantly increased in recent years, but this increase has been unevenly distributed across geographical areas and socio-demographic groups. Drawing on both international quantitative and qualitative scientific literature, we conduct a cross-analysis of the characteristics of inequalities in heat exposure, vulnerability, and resilience, highlighting the factors that contribute to their reproduction: patterns of urbanization and land artificialization (heat islands, etc.), spatial location and residential trajectories of different social groups (based on age, gender, and ethnic origin), the presence or absence of social support networks, and local dynamics of climate change adaptation. Then, using our qualitative research, and this analytical framework of inequalities and their determining factors, we explain the reasons behind the limited collective responsibility and response to these inequalities by cities, local authorities, urban planners, and social housing organizations in France. Our analysis is grounded in approaches of spatial and environmental justice, as well as the framework of socio-environmental inequalities that scholarships have gradually developed since the 2000s.
The aim of the study was to identify the areas where the industrial plants established between 1881 – the year the first plant was established in the town – and 1989 – the political transformation in Poland – in Grodzisk Mazowiecki were functioning and to identify the remains of them preserved in contemporary space of the town. The research examined the area within the present-day boundaries of Grodzisk Mazowiecki and was based on an analysis of old maps, comparing them with the contemporary space of Grodzisk on maps, orthophotomap and photographs taken during field studies. The study revealed that during the examined period industrial areas in the town were predominantly located on the northern side of the former Warsaw-Vienna Railway. Remnants of industrial activity from 1881-1989 were identified in the form of: architecture, street names, exhibits of memorial rooms and other objects and have been particularly well preserved in areas where the original function has remained.
Since the 2000s, the development of fish processing and packaging industries in North-West Africa has enabled several hundred women to gain access to paid employment in a historically male-dominated sector. This dynamic has helped transform the socio-professional landscape of the fishing industry in Mauritania, particularly in the coastal cities of Nouadhibou and Nouakchott. Despite this development, socio-economic data on female employability in this industry remain limited. This study aims to analyse the terms of access to employment, working conditions, training profiles, and professional and wage inequalities between men and women in fish processing units.The survey, conducted between November 2024 and March 2025 among 25 companies and 113 female employees, is based on a mixed methodology combining quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews and focus groups. The results show that women represent around 14% of the sector’s workforce, mainly employed in low-skilled, precarious and low-paid jobs. More than 60% of jobs held by women are temporary or daily, and significant pay gaps persist for equal positions. Sociocultural constraints, family demands, the arduous nature of the work and gender stereotypes are major obstacles to women’s stability and career advancement in this industry. The results highlight the existence of gender and ethnic segmentation in the labour market, revealing persistent social inequality in a context of industrial globalisation.
This paper investigates the evolution over time of River Contracts (RCs) processes in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of North-East Italy. RCs are voluntary agreements among stakeholders for the participatory management of water bodies. The analysis builds on previous work by Venturini and Visentin (2024), identifying RCs’ positioning based on their adoption of top-down vs. participatory approaches and implementation as projects vs. processes.Extending this framework, the role of time is examined as a variable impacting RCs’ trajectories. Support activities implemented by the geographers of the University of Udine are reported as key drivers for the evolution towards more participatory, process-oriented approaches, but the research also highlights the importance of individual commitment in steering this positive evolution, which place water at the center of territorial governance.
The aim of this contribution is to highlight the ancestral forms of adaptation adopted in the Algerian Sahara, in order to minimize the negative high temperatures effects noted during the hot season. For this purpose, field surveys were carried out, which allowed direct contact with local populations (in Saoura, Gourara, Touat and Tidikelt in southwest Algeria, Ghardaia in the central Sahara, Souf, Oued Righ and Tassili n’Ajjer to the southeast and Hoggar at the extreme south). This work has allowed the inventory of local ancestral know-how, which has allowed human populations coping with the austerity of high air temperatures and mitigating their effects. These practices are classified into architectural aspect and modes of construction (compaction, building materials, thickness of the walls, the openings, the terraces, the patio, the lanes, the outer covering and the colors of the walls) and other habits of the population during the hot season (working hours, seasonal nomadism and daily commute, humidification of the air, dietary habits and clothing).
The deployment of offshore wind farms on France’s economically and socially privileged coastlines has been accompanied by social mobilizations denouncing the environmental and visual impacts of the farms, the shortcomings of consultation procedures and the unequal distribution of tax benefits. Four heterogeneous categories of stakeholders make up the opposition: fishermen, permanent and secondary residents, local elected officials and local environmental associations. The aim of this article, at the crossroads of social geography and environmental justice, is to see whether the protests expressed can be likened to demands formulated in terms of environmental inequalities. This reveals a paradox: while the language of environmental justice does not percolate much among opponents, it is on the other hand mobilized by public authorities and industrialists, through environmental and territorial compensation. Two case studies will be examined: the offshore wind farm off Saint-Nazaire and the one in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc, using a qualitative methodology based on semi-structured interviews.
This study assessed the impact of fish meal and fish oil factories on artisanal processing, examining the cases of Cayar, Joal and Dakar. The study found that women processors are experiencing increasing difficulties in accessing raw materials to carry out their activities properly. Fish is often diverted to factories that have been flourishing on the African coast for more than a decade. To date, Senegal has six operational processing units, which generally source fresh fish, mainly sardinella, and process it into fishmeal and fish oil for aquaculture to meet growing consumer demand worldwide. This scourge has led to a considerable decline in the production of salted grilled fish ‘kéthiakh’ in processing sites. This situation has a direct impact on the activities of women processors, who say that their income has been steadily declining in recent years. Their comments are supported by statistical data from the DPM, which show a drastic drop in national production of ‘kéthiakh’ production, from nearly 40,000 tons in 2013 to less than 20,000 tonnes in 2020, a 50% reduction in less than ten years, resulting in a significant decrease in the apparent availability of fish.
