From territorial governance of commons toward a reconfiguration of management models. The case of the “Chaîne des puys –Limagne Fault” Unesco World Heritage application

International audience

English. We are face to new form of governance of commons in tension between development and protection emerging from the coexistence of management models. Nowadays a scale of management models of commons alongside the protected area management category of International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) can be identified from the most development-oriented model to the most protection-oriented model and from the most inclusive to the most exclusive model. Some authorities and stakeholders coordinate themselves with as main objective economic valorization of commons in the limit of national legislation and eventually implementing protected area with sustainable use of natural resources (category VI of UICN). Regional natural park (RNP) model aims to promote protection of Landscape/Seascape (category V of UICN) and to involve municipalities and civil society in a horizontal manner; nature protection depends on the concertation and remains sometimes uncertain. National park (NP) model involves mainly one pubic administration of the park directly linked with national government in a vertical manner and aims to preserve natural site from human activities. In France, legal status of the NP and RNP became closer with the reform of NP in 2006 involving more the stakeholders and with the evolution of RNP strengthening its charter. In the local situations, these models may not sum up the representations and the logics of all actors. This leads to innovate and invent specific territorial governance arrangements emerging from the coexistence of management models to make synergy between development and protection possible. We will illustrate our communication through the analysis of the territorial governance arrangement of the “Chaines des Puys – Faille de Limagne” natural site – with different form of propriety and use - located within the Auvergne volcanos RNP and recently inscribed in UNESCO list of world heritage. Following other works on territorial governance and proximity dynamics (Polge et al., 2017, 2018), we will put forward the tension between the trend to verticalize the managment and the trend to strengthen the implication of stakeholders and citizens in the management of natural site considered as commons. We will point out how this last trend leads to the implementation of innovative territorial policies and to the emergence of new management models.