Erwann Lagabrielle (right) Salwa Aabid (left) Barbara Losen (center)
Réunion Island faces a particularly complex governance challenge. Almost one million people live on a relatively small volcanic island, where most human activities are concentrated in the coastal zone. This means that decisions about land use, urban development, biodiversity, climate adaptation and maritime activities are closely interconnected.
Within the BlueGreen Governance project, researchers at the University of Réunion Island are exploring how governance can better address these connections between land and sea. Their work is not taking place in isolation. By linking the research project to an ongoing maritime planning process, the team hopes to contribute directly to public policy.
Erwann Lagabrielle, geographer and associate professor at the University of Réunion Island, speaks about the island’s governance context, public participation and the growing relationship between BlueGreen Governance and the development of the Document Stratégique de Bassin Maritime (DSBM).
The wider research behind the Réunion case shows why this is important. Despite two decades of initiatives, land–sea governance remains affected by administrative fragmentation, weak institutional coordination and difficulties in connecting scientific knowledge with decision-making. At the same time, political leadership, long-term institutional support and a shared strategic vision can create opportunities for change.
I have been working at the University of Réunion Island for about 15 years. My main background is in geography, but I also have experience in economics and ecology. My work increasingly brings these different perspectives together.
What I find particularly interesting about BlueGreen Governance is its theoretical perspective on governance. For a long time I have been interested in the relationships between science, politics, power and society. Scientists can sometimes see themselves as being disconnected from society, while others may believe that science itself can provide the solutions society needs.
I see my own role differently. I see myself as someone who can contribute to organising a dialogue between science and society. Science can inform that dialogue, but ultimately governance is also about democracy, values and the choices that people collectively make.
Réunion has experienced extremely rapid change. The population has approximately doubled since the middle of the twentieth century, while most people and economic activities are concentrated in the lower and coastal parts of the island. At the same time, Réunion operates within several overlapping political and administrative systems: it is an island with its own local history and society, a French overseas department , and is an outermost region of the European Union.
This historical dimension is essential for understanding governance. One of the lessons of BlueGreen Governance is that we cannot analyse present-day institutions, planning processes or new digital tools without understanding how the governance system developed over time. If you disconnect governance from its historical context, you miss an important part of the story.
The scientific study conducted within BlueGreen Governance confirms this complexity. It describes a system in which French and European administrative structures interact with local political and social dynamics, creating overlapping governance arrangements that can both enable and obstruct cooperation.
This connection has developed gradually and through personal and institutional relationships.
The DSBM is the strategic maritime planning document for the southern Indian Ocean basin. It translates France’s national maritime strategy to the regional context and covers issues ranging from ecosystem protection and maritime economic development to coastal management, climate risks and scientific research. It is developed through a process involving both public and private stakeholders.
In our case an important factor has been the long-standing relationship between the university and people directly involved in maritime planning. I have worked for around 15 years with the person responsible for the marine spatial planning process, including on issues such as shark-risk management. Over time we have developed a relationship based on collaboration and mutual trust.
BlueGreen Governance created an opportunity to deepen that relationship. We started connecting our research activities to the actual planning process, through shared supervision of young researchers and through continuous exchanges with the institutions involved. This has not been a single intervention. It is a step-by-step process, which now involves almost weekly, and sometimes even daily interaction.
In that sense, the influence of BlueGreen Governance on the DSBM should not be understood as the project simply delivering a document or recommendation to policymakers. Its contribution lies more in creating a process in which research, strategic foresight and participation can become embedded in an existing policy process.
That is certainly the ambition, but it is important to be realistic about how such influence works.
Research projects often organise participatory workshops with researchers, policymakers and stakeholders and then describe these activities as participation. There is a risk however, that researchers simply invite people they already know and remain within their own professional networks.
We wanted to avoid that. The aim was to anchor the BlueGreen Governance activities in a genuine, large-scale public policy process. Our first workshop was useful, but it was not representative of Réunion society.
By connecting the next stages of the project to the maritime planning process there is an opportunity to reach a much broader range of actors and potentially influence how the DSBM is developed. The important point is that the BlueGreen Governance process and the formal governance process are increasingly becoming connected rather than operating as two separate worlds.
There is experience with participation, but it remains uneven. Previous initiatives demonstrate that large-scale participation is possible. The Ocean Metiss project, for example, involved hundreds of local stakeholders in discussions about maritime activities and used digital mapping and discussion tools to enable participants to propose management scenarios. The Regional Council has also experimented with direct citizen engagement through different initiatives However, the research shows that participatory approaches are still relatively underdeveloped within the wider governance system. A central question is therefore: who actually participates?
If participation mainly involves government officials, engineers, scientists and organised stakeholders, it can be valuable, but it should not automatically be described as representative public participation. For BlueGreen Governance, the challenge is to broaden participation while ensuring that the process remains connected to institutions that can actually make decisions.
The second workshop is an important next step because it will be more closely integrated with the formal maritime planning process.
The plan is to organise the workshop together with the actors involved in the DSBM and to create a meeting point between different levels of government, particularly the French state and the Regional Council. The state has agreed to this approach, and the workshop is planned for the end of September. We expect a much larger event than the first workshop, potentially involving between 100 and 200 participants.
Strategic foresight will play an important role this time. We have been developing divergent scenarios that explore different possible futures. Students of our university have contributed by examining what these futures could mean for technology, policy, the environment and social structures. These different perspectives have subsequently been brought together into synthetic scenarios that will be presented during the second workshop.
The purpose is not to predict exactly what Réunion will look like in the future. The scenarios are a way of opening up discussion. They allow participants to consider different futures and then ask a more fundamental question: given these possible futures, what kind of society and governance system do we want?
The process is designed as a sequence. The first stages focus on broad questions about possible futures, collective ambitions and relationships between actors. Only later do we move towards more concrete spatial planning.
This is deliberate. If you introduce a detailed mapping or planning tool too early, participants may immediately focus on their own interests, locations and sectoral agendas. The wider conversation about the future could then disappear.
The intention is to introduce a participatory planning tool at a later stage, during a third workshop. By that point, participants should already have explored possible futures and discussed what they collectively want to achieve. The spatial tool can then help translate those broader ambitions into more concrete choices.
Success would not simply mean producing another scientific paper or organising a successful workshop. It would mean strengthening the connections between people who produce knowledge, people who make decisions and people who are affected by those decisions.
Governance challenges cannot be solved by science alone, nor by a single institution. The research points to fragmentation as one of the island’s persistent problems, but also shows that trust, long-term collaboration and shared strategic thinking can help overcome institutional boundaries.
The most promising contribution of BlueGreen Governance may be the process itself: creating spaces in which researchers, government institutions and a wider group of stakeholders can think about the future together, while connecting those conversations to an actual policy instrument such as the DSBM.
That is where a research project can potentially make a lasting difference—not by standing outside governance and telling policymakers what to do, but by becoming part of a longer dialogue about how decisions are made, whose knowledge counts and what kind of future Réunion wants to create.
You can find more infomation about the Case Study here.
An interview with Erwann Lagabrielle, University of Réunion Island BGG Réunion Island team Erwann Lagabrielle (right) Salwa Aabid (left) Barbara Losen (center) Réunion Island faces a particularly complex governance challenge.
In June, the Norwegian government presented a proposal for an updated action plan for the Oslofjord, covering 2026-2030. While the first Oslofjord plan was prepared with limited public participation, the
Preparations by the team at the Universitat de València for the third BGG workshop are in full swing. This team is responsible for the Valencian region Case Study and they
Picture a coastline under pressure. Sea levels are rising. Tourist numbers are climbing. Fishing communities are struggling to maintain their livelihoods. Biodiversity is declining. Now picture the institutions responsible for