TerritEx : Experimenting with innovative integrated and sustainable management methods on mountain territories

TerritEx, Work Package 3, was characterised by collective work by researchers and actors in participatory research think tanks to examine its tools, contributions and method. Three collectives were formed:

• the "Participatory research and reflexivity" collective, focused on the relation between research and actors, with a thought process for a system to support protected areas by research (REP);
• the "Forms and functions of territorial observatories in the Rhône-Alpes and beyond" collective, to examine existing observatories, assess existing devices and systems, and support the creation of new observatories;
• the "culture and territory projects" collective. On the key subjects of nature protection areas and city-mountain interface areas, these collectives share the following common goals: (i) reaffirming and consolidating the fields of innovation in protected areas, (ii) working in association with research and, to this end, pooling the interrogation of park technical teams, actors concerned, elected officials' social and economic issues, and university issues. The idea is to look into the methods of change within these mountain regions through the experimentation of actor-researcher co-construction.

Two post-doctorate researchers have been hired subsequent to their implementation:

• One to investigate research-action practices and, more broadly, collaborative practices in mountain regions;
• The other to focus on the methods of attachment to the territory in a mountainous protected natural space.

This WP carries a considerable amount of influence. Favoured partners in this phase were Park institutions (and more specifically their scientific committees) and metropolitan land-use planning structures. The convergent reflections of researchers and managers of protected areas on the processes for co-constructing knowledge culminated, in 2014, in a research allowance, financed by LabEx, entitled "Scientific advice for protected mountain areas: management tools and innovation drivers between nature, science and society?"

Internationally acknowledged, the work of the WP in general, and its thesis in particular, led to the establishment of an international workshop at the request of the ISCAR (International Scientific Committee on Research in the Alps). It extends the analyses conducted in France to the entire Alpine arc.

In the specific area of collaborative research-action, LabEx has undeniably offered the means for developing a research and partner network that would otherwise not have been possible without specific human resources. Organising the interface systems is very difficult, and the laboratories have few, if any, means with which to deploy them very regularly. The reflexive approach, which associates a number of topics (parks, city-mountain) across different networks, quickly brought about increased expertise and theorisation abilities in relation to collaborative research-action: the number of communications is significant in this respect.

LabEx resources have also served to present and underscore research activities via the research log and the workshops. Within LabEx itself, the knowledge and know-how acquired on the collaborative systems are likely to be developed cross-functionally across all the teams and topics.