Home>The interdisciplinary workshop on environmental research (AIRE)

The interdisciplinary workshop on environmental research (AIRE)

Section #presentation

The interdisciplinary workshop on environmental research (Atelier Interdisciplinaire de Recherches sur l'Environnement; AIRE) was formed at Sciences Po with the support of the Research division in 2018.
Coordinated by Joost de Moor, Assistant Professor at the Center for European Studies and Comparative politics (CEE) and Manisha Anantharaman, Assistant Professor at the Center for the Sociology of Organisations (CSO), it aims to bring together the growing community of scholars working on environmental topics at Sciences Po in an interdisciplinary dialogue. AIRE’s coordination is supported by a steering committee (Meriem Hamdi-Cherif (OFCE), Emilie Pasquier (CHSP), Guillaume Lachenal (médialab), Matteo Mandelli (LIEPP) and Bernard Reber (CEVIPOF) and a project manager (Marie Le Carrer).

The complexity of environmental challenges requires interdisciplinary approaches. AIRE fosters interdisciplinary research by convening seminars, informal dialogues and serving as a hub, incubator, and integrator for environmental research at Sciences Po. . It provides an entry point for new colleagues in environmental studies, long-time colleagues shifting toward environmental research, and external collaborators seeking an overview of and connection to Sciences Po’s environmental research community and its activities.

AIRE is organized into three thematic streams and one general stream. These thematic streams are renewed every few years, aiming to maintain continuity in our discussions over multiple semesters while remaining open to innovation and the introduction of new themes. Currently, three streams are active:

The thematic and general streams host seminars on the second Thursday of most months, from 14:45 to 16:45 (although the exact date may change in view of holidays etc.). Additionally, streams organize smaller events throughout the year, and many more activities are organized outside these streams with support from AIRE

While primarily focused on coordinating interdisciplinary environmental research dialogue and networks within Sciences Po, AIRE actively encourages engagement with researchers beyond our institution and collaborates with similar networks, such as the Centre des Politiques de la Terre (University of Paris) and the Alliance program (Columbia University, Paris I, École Polytechnique, and Sciences Po).

If you would like to join the AIRE network, follow its activities or those of a specific stream, would like to organize an activity for AIRE, or would like to request its support, please register below or contact aire@sciencespo.fr

 

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Read previous issues of the AIRE newsletter, launched in September 2023 and now published monthly:

Section #seminars

Next events [2025-2026]

  • Monday, 17 November 2025, 12:30–14:00
    • Seminar with Matthew Gandy (University of Cambridge) | Urban metabolism: towards an alternative conceptual synthesis

In his presentation Matthew Gandy will outline four aspects to urban metabolism: the organicist emphasis on cities and their agricultural hinterlands; the diagrammatic city of modelling and trophic imaginaries; the neo-Marxian concern with metabolic rift and evolving intersections between capital, the human body, and a variety of material infrastructures; and the more recent interest in metabolic densities, occluded pathways, and multispecies metabolic entanglements.  He will suggest that an alternative conceptual synthesis might allow for a more embodied, multi-subjectival, and historically situated reading of urban metabolism.

Room N201, 1 Place Saint-Thomas, Sciences Po (or online)

Learn more | Registration

  • Thursday, 27 November 2025, 14:45–16:45 [Seminar organized by the stream « TREES »]
    • In presence of Thomas Bernauer (ETH Zurich) | Reducing the Global Environmental Footprint of Local Consumption

In high-income societies, decoupling economic progress from environmental impacts has, thus far, been achieved to a large degree by outsourcing such impacts to other countries via international trade. Richer countries have thus become greener domestically but are causing a large environmental footprint abroad, often in poorer and less democratic countries. The speaker will start by discussing recent research findings on international environmental footprint shifting and then talk about how the global environmental footprint of local consumption could be reduced, both through sustainability regulation of global supply chains and fostering sustainable consumption behaviour at the individual level.

Room N201, 1 Place Saint-Thomas, Sciences Po (or online)

Learn more | Registration

  • Thursday 11 December 2025, 14:45-16:45 [Seminar organized by the stream « Unboxing the Environment »]
    • In presence of Austin Zeiderman (London School of Economics) | Artery: Racial Ecologies in Fluvial Colombia

The Magdalena River, linking Colombia’s Andean interior and Caribbean coast, long served as a conduit for the expansion of colonialism and capitalism in the Americas. Now a state-backed megaproject seeks to transform the waterway into a logistics corridor through a series of engineering works. In this talk, Austin Zeiderman relates the Magdalena’s fraught past and uncertain future to global entanglements of race, nature, and capital. He engages with debates across the social sciences and humanities to examine how racial orders shape ecologies and infrastructures, thereby upholding exploitative relations not only among human populations, but also between people and the planet. The river is now a rich site for examining the regimes of extractivism and inequality that continue to afflict the modern world. 

Room B010, 1 Place Saint-Thomas, Sciences Po (or online)

Learn more | Registration 

 

Past events

12.30-14:30: AIRE seminar "Cross-cultural learning can help re-orient dominant gender systems away from facilitating growth and environmental degradation, and toward care and regeneration of abundant life" with Susan Paulson (University of Florida, Visiting at CRIS)

14:45-16:45 : Presentation of their master thesis by candidates shortlisted for the AIRE Award for Environmental Student Research

15:15 – 16:30: Roundtable discussion: Engaging Students in Environmental Research and Teaching at Sciences Po

16:45 – 18:00: AIRE Award for Environmental Graduate Research, followed by a convivial reception

  • 23 Octobre, 14:45-16:45 (More information) | Climate-friendly transformation pathways and its enemies

AIRE Seminar organized by the stream « In Transition », with Andreas Novy (WU Vienna)

19 September, 12.30-16.45 : AIRE opening event

10 October, 14.45-18.00

  • 14.45-16.45 : Seminar organized by the stream « TREES », with Tom Dedeurwaerdere (UC Louvain).

The conference will address the collaborative governance of knowledge co‐production in transformational sustainability research. First, we will present an innovative theoretical framework for successfully navigating collective action challenges in boundary‐crossing research collaborations, based on insights from the literature on the governance of knowledge commons. This framework aims to address various types of collective action failures encountered in building partnerships between scientific researchers and societal actors involved in value‐laden and multifaceted sustainability transformations. Second, the framework will be illustrated through various mechanisms for organizing research co‐design and social learning on sustainability values in transdisciplinary research collaborations

14 November, 14.45-16.45

  • Seminar organized by the stream « In transition », with Chris Shaw (University of Sussex) : "Liberalism and the end of climate change"

We are probably all familiar with the saying that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. But the coordinator class of liberal democracies is unable to imagine either the end of the world, or the end of capitalism. Instead, liberalism's defenders promote a vision of the net zero 2050 world which is the same as today, just minus the greenhouse gas emissions, and untouched by the impacts of climate change.
Dr. Christopher Shaw will explain how the liberal symbolism embedded in the net-zero discourse functions as an act of control, effectively closing off the possibility of imagining a different political future for humanity. This impasse poses serious threats to democracy, the climate justice agenda, and human well-being. Dr. Shaw will explore the potential contributions of a class-conscious transformative adaptation agenda to address the climate failings of liberal democracy.

Friday 13 December, 14.45-16.45 :  

  • Seminar organized by the stream « Unboxing the Environment », with Bathsheba Demuth (Brown University) 

Terre-mer offers a model of historical narrative that pays close attention to ecological transformations and the links between species, while simultaneously being able to mobilize this perspective to take a fresh look at the nature of twentieth-century states and economies, in both their capitalist and socialist variants.

This session of the AIRE seminar will be devoted to a conversation with Bathsheba Demuth on the methodological challenges of her approach and its potential for the practice of environmental social sciences. 

  • 29 January, 14h45-17h45 : Early Career Research Seminar 

During this seminar some of the PhD candidates and postdocs working on environmental topics at Sciences Po will briefly present their work (at all stages of development), followed by thematic, interdisciplinary discussions between doctoral students and other members of the Sciences Po environmental research community. 

More information and program here

  • 13 February 14h45-16h45 : Stream “Unboxing the Environment"

Cette communication porte sur les pratiques de cueillette de plantes par des femmes chinoises dans l’agglomération parisienne, analysées comme les manifestations d’une écologie populaire discrète. Issu d’une enquête collective menée entre 2023 et 2024 auprès de ces cueilleuses, mais aussi auprès des gestionnaires des espaces végétalisés urbains, nous avons utilisé un ensemble de méthodes qualitatives pour documenter ces pratiques (enquête ethnographique, inventaire ethnobotanique, collaboration avec un photographe) au sein de sept espaces végétalisés de zones urbaines denses et périurbaines moins denses.

Sur le plan théorique, cette enquête permet de nourrir une réflexion autour de la notion d’écologie populaire. Au travers des pratiques de cueillette et d’usage des plantes en ville, nous visons à étudier et éclairer les relations au vivant telles qu’elles sont vécues par des migrantes chinoises, face aux paradigmes dominants de la gestion de la nature urbaine et de leurs transformations dans le cadre d’une transition écologique.

Information

  • 28 February, 12h30-14h00 : AIRE lunch conversation 

For this next session, we would like to kick-off the conversation by discussing extreme weather events and climate backlash. From Valencia to L.A., the devastating impacts of climate change and extreme weather events are becoming more and more evident and salient even in the Global North.

Yet, the trending notion of 'backlash' indicates a slowing down, if not a proper step back, in climate action across the World. How can we explain this paradox? What can we expect for the coming future? 

Information

  • 13 March, 14h45-16h45 : Stream 2 seminar- “No sustainability transformation beyond this point? Exploring the ‘glass ceiling of transformation’ in the modern democratic state”

Modern ‘environmental states’ have achieved some impressive results in dealing with domestic environmental problems but continue to fail dramatically in resolving the planetary ecological and climate crisis. In this talk, Daniel Hausknost (Vienna University) will present a range of explanations for this discrepancy and speculate about future trajectories of state action.

Information

  • 10 April, 14h45-16h45 : Stream 3 seminar - "Regards internationaux sur la planification écologique"

Salle K008, 1 place Saint-Thomas, 75007 Paris

Avec l'intensification des crises écologiques, les politiques de l'environnement et du climat imposent de plus en plus aux Etats des restructurations internes et la définition de nouvelles modalités d'action. Délaissée par l'Etat néo-libéral pendant plusieurs décennies, la planification semble aujourd'hui opérer un grand retour, notamment sous l'effet de la crise climatique et des politiques d'atténuation et d'adaptation qui lui répondent. Cette planification écologique emprunte-t-elle des voies nouvelles par rapport à celles qui l'ont précédé dans les domaines de l'industrie ou de l'aménagement de l'espace? A quelles résistances se heurte-t-elle? Que retenir des différentes expériences internationales ?

Information 

  • 24 April, 12h30-14h00 : AIRE lunch conversations

We would like to kick-off the conversation by discussing the threats and opportunities of a post-free-trade world order. For decades, environmentalists have identified globalization as a major obstacle to environmental protection and policymaking. Today, however, the tables have turned: powerful far-right political actors across the globe are increasingly adopting anti-globalist stances.

Against this backdrop, we ask: what are the ecological implications of the ongoing dismantling of the Washington consensus? Could this moment present an opportunity for environmentalists to counteract?

  • 28 Mai, 13h30-15h00 : Assemblée Générale de AIRE

The Annual General Meeting is an opportunity to reflect on the past year, discuss future initiatives and collectively shape the future of AIRE.

  • 03 June, 14h45-16h45 : Seminar “Long problems”, with Thomas Hale (University of Oxford)

Thomas Hale examines the politics of climate change and other “long problems.” He shows why we find it hard to act before a problem’s effects are felt, why our future interests carry little weight in current debates, and why our institutions struggle to balance durability and adaptability. With long-term goals in mind, he outlines strategies for tilting the politics and policies of climate change toward better outcomes. Globalization “widened” political problems across national boundaries and changed our understanding of politics and governance.

Plus d'informations ici

  • 18 Juin (full day) : Annual AIRE day

Plus d'informations ici

 

Events in collaboration with AIRE

Organised by Pia Bailleul (CERI, Fonds Latour), Inès Calvo Valenzuela (CERI, Fonds Latour), Martin Cavero Castillo (IRIS, EHESS) and Kyra Grieco (Mondes Américains) in partnership with AIRE

  • 11-12 December : Event “Nature-Based Strategies for Urban Climate Adaptation: Insights from Cities in the Global South and North”

An annual event organised by the Urban School as part of the “Nature in the City” project, in collaboration with AIRE and the Institut pour les arts et la création (contact : Francesca Ferlicca, Rachel L. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow)

 

Section #Award

Aligned with its mission to strengthen the connection between research and education in environmental studies, AIRE held the third edition of the Environmental Student Research Award for the 2024-2025 academic year. This initiative recognized and promoted the most outstanding Master’s research across all schools, encouraging students to pursue environmental inquiry throughout their studies. The award also aimed to foster innovation and interdisciplinary approaches to environmental and ecological research. The recipient(s) received a prize and will have the opportunity to publish their work on the Institute for Environmental Transformations’ website

The interdisciplinary jury awarding the prizes is made up of researchers from Sciences Po's permanent faculty:

  • Chair of the jury : Sandrine REVET, CERI
  • Meriem HAMDI-CHERIF, OFCE
  • Carola KLOECK, CERI
  • Alain POTTAGE, Centre de recherche de l’Ecole de Droit
  • Basak SARAC-LESAVRE, CSO
  • Ankit SIKARWAR, CRIS

5 candidates were shortlisted and were invited to present their work at the AIRE back-to-school event on 11 September 2025 :

  • Joséphine BERTOUX, ""We want more green, but...": Protesting urban greening in Paris" (Research School, Master in sociology)
  • Susanne DE JONG, "The EU Strategic Partnerships for Critical Raw Materials with Emerging and Developing Economies - A True Promise of Local Value Creation?" (PSIA, Master in Environmental Policy)
  • Berta FLORES ARICO, "The agents of wind : Gender perspectives on the green energy transition. An ethnography in La Guajira" (PSIA, Master in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action)
  • Julia KIELOCH, "Energy transition for whom? Examining the distribution of green subsidy schemes in Poland" (EAP, Master in Public Policy)
  • Paul SERVAIS, "The energy transition in rural France: powering the radical right ?" (Urban School, Master in Governing ecological transitions in cities) 

 

Following these presentations, the committee awarded three prizes to the most outstanding contributions at the seminar session held on October 9, 2025. The committee paid particular attention to the relevance of the research question, the rigor of the methodology and quality of data and sources, as well as the clarity of the argumentation and the presentation quality.

Congratulations to this year's three winners of the Student Environmental Research Award!

1st prize 

Berta FLORES ARICO (PSIA, Master in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action) for her master thesis entitled  “The agents of wind: Gender perspectives on the green energy transition. An ethnography in La Guajira”

The accelerating climate crisis has prompted global policy efforts to transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy sources. Central to this shift is the green and just energy transition agenda, which redefines natural elements—such as wind—as strategic and appropriable resources for sustainable development. This thesis asks: how are these elements constituted as strategic energy resources? How does the global green energy agenda intersect with local realities? What are the frictions and encounters underlying this transition? 

Focusing on La Guajira, a northern Caribbean region in Colombia inhabited by the Wayuu people, this thesis explores how wind energy projects are embedded in specific social, political, and territorial dynamics. La Guajira, long shaped by the presence of El Cerrejón—one of Latin America's largest open-pit coal mines—has been reframed by the Colombian state as the "epicenter" of the national energy transition. Since the early 2000s, wind farms such as Jepírachi, Guajira I, and the planned JK megaproject have begun to be constructed or planned in the region. The presence of the recognized indigenous Wayuu people, has accompanied this process with the deployment of the Prior Consultation Mechanism, articulated under international and national regulations.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cabo de la Vela from December 2024 to February 2025, this research comparatively examines four case studies of wind energy projects. It investigates how wind is constituted not just as a renewable energy source, but as a site of economic negotiation, political power, and cultural transformation. These projects are far from neutral or purely technical—they are deeply tied to negotiations over territorial ownership and rights over future impacts’ compensations structured by the Prior Consultation mechanism. These encounters are shaped by the fragmented state presence, complex relations among companies, wayuu authorities, and community members. 

Through a gendered lens, the thesis analyzes how the green transition reconfigures social roles within Wayuu communities. New economic opportunities around wind energy production are giving rise to shifts in gender and generational roles. These evolving subjectivities reflect hybrid processes that blend market and moral economies, national and Indigenous governance, and environmental and cultural priorities. The thesis contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship on energy transitions by integrating political science, sociology, anthropology, legal analysis, and historical context. It highlights the importance of ethnographic approaches to understanding how global climate agendas are lived, experienced, and renegotiated in local settings. In doing so, it reveals the underlying structures and tensions shaping the current and future development of renewable energy in specific territories.

2nd prize

Julia KIELOCH (EAP, Master in Public Policy) for her master thesis entitled  “Energy transition for whom? Examining the distribution of green subsidy schemes in Poland”

Energy transition represents an opportunity to deeply reshape our economic systems to make  them not only more sustainable but also more just. However, if not carefully designed, it can  create new risks and divides for those who get to enjoy its fruits such as green, cheap energy  and clean air and those forced to rely on polluting and increasingly expensive fossil fuels. This  work examines the spatial and socio-economic distribution of two green subsidy schemes in  Poland targeted at homeowners and supporting investments in energy efficiency and renewable  energy. It exploits extensive, and often never published before, data on subsidy contracts signed  within the framework of the “Clean Air” and “My Electricity” programmes and examines  whether they contribute to or mitigate the development of inequalities. With the use of  descriptive statistics, regression analyses and three original indices, this study finds that indeed,  participation in the programmes differs significantly across groups and regions. It argues that this is due to the programmes’ design, with “Clean Air” providing dedicated support for low income households and “My Electricity”, on the contrary. The extent of inequality in  programmes’ take-up is mapped, highlighting regional hotspots in need of urgent policy  intervention. Finally, the study suggests how the programmes should be reformed to mitigate  potential inequalities and ensure their more equitable distribution.

3rd prize

Joséphine BERTOUX (School of Research, Master in Sociology) for her master thesis entitled “We want more green, but...: Protesting urban greening in Paris”

Urban green spaces are often hailed as essential for a just transition for their benefits to air quality, cooling, and social integration. However, such projects often face resistance, which remains understudied compared to other greening controversies such as wind farms. This thesis examines justifications behind opposition to greening projects in Paris, where public action centers such initiatives. 

Using a mixed-methods qualitative approach, I combine computational text analysis of petition comments protesting urban greening initiatives throughout Paris with a case study of a particular opposition movement in eastern Paris. This allows me to exploit different advantages of the qualitative research arsenal. The former method, leveraging the scope permitted by text-as-data, provides a contextualization of urban greening controversies; however, it remains static and cannot be taken at face value. Thus, semi-structured interviews provide a more in-depth exploration of this landscape. 

Overall, I find that opposition to urban greening projects extend far beyond green backlash to encompass diverse justifications related to comfort, tradition, and political representation. Strikingly, protesters do not denounce urban greening per se, but rather the way in which it is implemented in Paris—in terms of both what it misconstrues as environmental benefits and what problems it creates. Furthermore, I uncover discursive strategies put forward by protesters to maximize the impact of their struggles. Most notably, in my focal case study, protesters over-emphasized appeals to environmentalism while under-representing more prominent concerns about unwanted change in a bid to appeal to green political opportunity structures. Finally, I conclude this thesis by discussing the social determinants of successful opposition, showing how privileged protesters leverage their social, cultural, and economic capital to propel their movement. 

In times where just urban climate policies are critical to mitigating the impacts of unprecedented climate change, this study offers insights into citizen resistance to urban greening initiatives and explores pathways to foster public acceptance of the net zero transition. It also invites further inquiry into classed barriers to climate action.

Contacts 

 

The interdisciplinary jury awarding the prizes was made up of researchers from Sciences Po's permanent faculty:

  • Presidence of jury : Richard BALME, CEE
  • Sarah GENSBURGER, CSO
  • Charlotte HALPERN, CEE
  • Carola KLOECK, CERI
  • Paul MALLIET, OFCE
  • Alain POTTAGE, Research center of the Law School
  • Bernard REBER, CEVIPOF

At the jury meeting on 08 July 2024, chaired by Richard Balme (CEE), 5 candidates were shortlisted and were invited to present their work at the AIRE back-to-school event on 19 September 2024 :

  • Justine BANEGAS, "Réclamer justice, réparer le péyi. Mobilisations antillaises et usages militants du droit face au scandale du chlordécone de la Martinique à l’Île-de-France" (Research school)
  • Fiona HURREY, "Dichotomies of Human-Wildlife Conflict: Drivers of Policy Choice and Barriers to Coexistence in the Context of Wolves in France" (PSIA)
  • Sophia NOËL, "The Effect of Heat on Fertility Rates in France" (Research school)
  • Loris PETRINI, "Dancing for an Ecological Revolution: Artivism in the Paris and London Environmental Scenes" (Research school)
  • Chloé TEN BRINK, "A question of protection: justice considerations in planned relocation" (PSIA)

 

Following these presentations, the committee awarded three prizes to the most outstanding contributions at the seminar session held on October 10, 2024. The committee paid particular attention to the relevance of the research question, the rigor of the methodology and quality of data and sources, as well as the clarity of the argumentation and the presentation quality.

1st prize

Justine Banegas (Research school, Master in political science), for her memoir entitled "Réclamer justice, réparer le péyi. Mobilisations antillaises et usages militants du droit face au scandale du chlordécone de la Martinique à l’Île-de-France".

"This research, conducted over almost two years, focused on the forms of mobilization and demands for justice expressed by victims' collectives in the aftermath of the chlordecone scandal in the West Indies. Officially used from 1972 to 1993, chlordecone, an organochlorine pesticide used to control banana weevils, has been known to the French government since the early 1970s and declared toxic by the WHO since 1979. Today, it is responsible for the contamination of 92% of the population of Martinique and 95% of the population of Guadeloupe. Its links with the development of prostate cancer, neurodevelopmental disorders and fertility problems are the subject of several ongoing epidemiological and toxicological studies. Starting from the vocabulary of crime that saturates the slogans and discourses of the so-called anti-chlordecone mobilizations, this study seeks to understand the ways in which the seizure of the law reconfigures the space of West Indian mobilizations and, through the demands for justice it brings into play, the relationship with the French institutions that are supposed to respond to the scandal.


Because the chlordecone scandal touches on a variety of environmental, health, economic, and social issues, its study requires an interdisciplinary approach, which has been highlighted in a number of works in epidemiology, toxicology, and agronomy. One of the aims of this research was to complement the still underdeveloped social science literature on this issue, which has never been studied from a legal perspective, by combining an approach based on comparative politics, sociology of law, and the emerging literature on victim mobilization. By choosing a double fieldwork in Martinique and Île-de-France, a qualitative method was developed based on participant observation in French or Creole at internal meetings, demonstrations and press conferences, as well as semi-directive interviews with members of various collectives on the one hand, and the lawyers of these collectives on the other."

2nd prize

Sophia Noël (Research school, Master in sociology), for her memoir entitled "The Effect of Heat on Fertility Rates in France" (under the supervision of Charlotte Halpern).

"This mémoire is interdisciplinary in its ambition, resting at the intersection between demography and climate science. Each of these fields has benefited from the cultivation of long-run, high-quality datasets on meteorological and fertility data, respectively. Yet, there remains an opportunity for the development of new research streams by bringing these rich data sources together in order to better understand how complex changes in the planet’s climate are affecting populations across the world. The burgeoning literature on the effect of heat on fertility suggests that the interdependence of these two dynamics is both relevant and, at this point, under-researched relative to its importance across a diverse array of policy and academic debates involving population aging and the diversity of health risks posed by climate change.

There is only one study that measures the effect of heat on fertility rates in France. Régnier-Loilier (2010) uses an epidemiological approach, comparing fertility in the years surrounding heat shocks to the fertility rate following heat waves. More recent work on this subject on other country cases (Barreca et al. 2018; Conte Keivabu et al. 2023; Cho, 2020; Hajdu and Hajdu 2022; Marteleto et al. 2023; Hajdu, 2024) has converged upon the use of fixed-effects modeling to estimate the effects of heat on fertility rates. This approach more comprehensively isolates the effects of heat on fertility from other spatial and temporal confounders. This mémoire adopts such a fixed-effects approach, thereby building upon the findings of Régnier-Loilier and filling an empirical gap in the literature by measuring the effects of heat on fertility in France according to a state-of-the-art approach. This technique is applied to a dataset consisting of high-quality demographic and meteorological data compiled specifically for this mémoire, covering the years from 1975 to 2020.

The findings indicate that days with a mean daily temperature above 25 °C have an estimated effect of 0.260 and 0.256 percent on Total Fertility Rates nine and ten months later, respectively. Additionally, there is no statistically significant, positive rebound in births following heat shocks, suggesting that at least a portion of the loss of births due to heat exposure is permanent and therefore relevant to the long-run age structure of France. The effect has become smaller over the window of analysis and is heterogeneous at the sub-national level, with fertility rates in colder regions being affected at lower temperatures than in hot regions. Incorporating valuable insights from existing sociological literature on heat wave risks (Klinenberg 2002; Keller, 2015), the potential roles of policy and air conditioning in mediating the relationship between heat and fertility over space and time are discussed. Finally, a methodological contribution to the existing heat and fertility literature is aimed at by testing results across alternate methodologies, such as a polynomial spline and historical threshold, with consistent findings across these methodological approaches."

3rd prize

Chloé Ten Brink (PSIA, Master in Environmental Policy), for her memoir entitled "A question of protection: justice considerations in planned relocation".

"At the intersection of necessity and opportunity lies the complexities of planned relocation, a policy that profoundly shapes landscapes, communities, and futures. Planned relocation can be understood as organized community displacement that responds to or anticipates a given risk, which in the case of this study is the risk of river flooding, the most common natural disaster since 1990 and one of the most significant natural risks in Europe. While these policies are thought to be of growing relevance and necessity, literature indicates that planned relocation is exceptionally hard to do successfully and can lead to unjust outcomes.

An approach to tackle this issue involves examining the ethical dimensions of relocation, particularly emphasizing the lens of justice. With this aim, this thesis employed the six dimensions of justice outlined by Siders and Ajibade (2021): distributive, procedural, ecological, recognition, restoration, and intergenerational justice. Through a deductive analysis, this justice framework was applied to two cases of compensation-based relocation: relocation in the Eferding Basin in Austria, following the 2013 flooding of the Danube, and relocation in the depoldering of the Noordwaard in the Netherlands, part of the Dutch Room for the River programme. This analysis was achieved through document analysis and 20 semi-structured interviews with key informants to assess how each case study addressed chosen criteria for each dimension of justice.

Overall, while efforts were made, the pursuit of justice was only partially realized in both the Eferding Basin and the Noordwaard, leaving certain critical aspects unattended. Beyond this first analysis, this justice-based approach allowed for an operationalized use of intuitive notions—those of fairness, of right and wrong—rather than an explicit evaluation or measurement of the success of case studies. The inclusion of justice in policy allows us to center ethical discussions and represents an ideal to work towards. As such, this research drew the following recommendations: that compensation must go beyond financial loss, attempting where possible to rectify any intangible loss caused through relocation. There is moreover a crucial need for transparent and comprehensive communication with impacted communities, without which the entirety of the policy process may be undermined. Relocation is also an opportunity to think critically about land use and management with an emphasis on ecological flourishing, and finally, this thesis underlined the necessity to dedicate significant time and capacity on behalf of the policy-maker to understand, acknowledge, and integrate local history and culture"

 

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