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De- and re-infrastructuring the Rhône Delta: Ecological restoration and industrial legacies in the Camargue

Antoine Brochet
Université Grenoble-Alpes, UMR PACTE, UMR IGE, Grenoble, France; antoine.brochet@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr

Joana Guerrin
INRAE, UMR G-EAU, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France; joana.guerrin@inrae.fr

ABSTRACT: This article examines the transformation of inherited hydraulic infrastructures through the case of the former saltworks of the Camargue, in France’s Rhône Delta. There, an ecological restoration project – subsequently framed as a Nature-based Solution – has restored hydrological connectivity while discontinuing the maintenance of former industrial seafront dykes. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted between 2021 and 2023, combining semi-structured interviews, observation and document analysis, the article examines the social and political consequences of this transformation. The project is conceptualised by the authors as a process of de- and re-infrastructuring that reconfigures hydrosocial territories and their historically sedimented hydrosocial heritages. The analysis shows how infrastructural transformation reshapes social practices, ecological relations, power relations and perceptions of risk, and how it can generate conflicts over historically constituted relationships between water, infrastructures and territorial practices. The article argues that such transformations can produce forms of hydrosocial misrecognition when historically constituted socio-ecological relations, situated knowledge and territorial practices are insufficiently recognised. More broadly, it shows that Nature-based Solutions, often presented as consensual and depoliticised, can themselves become sites of conflict over how territories should be inhabited, protected and transformed.

KEYWORDS: Hydrosocial territory, de- and re-infrastructuring, Nature-based Solutions, hydrosocial misrecognition, Rhône Delta