Ecological restoration as a new development paradigm? Perspectives on the Garonne-Gironde river-estuarine environment
Although land management policies have improved the overall control of rivers, they have also resulted in considerable disturbance and deterioration in a range of different environments. New approaches to the restoration of wetlands are now being tried in south-western France, on the Garonne River and in the Gironde estuary. Such changes primarily involve allowing storm-induced flooding of marshlands (depolderisation). Further upstream, in the mid-Garonne-Toulouse region, consideration is currently being given to restoring areas of standing water or creating flood expansion zones. Our article uses a multidisciplinary approach to analyze the emergence of this new paradigm from a geo-historical, geochemical, ecological and sociological perspective.