In Europe, strategies for thinking coastal adaptation to face sea level rise or compensating habitats losses began around forty years ago, although in very different ways depending on which countries embarked on the process. Natural areas, whether protected or not, can be the starting point for an adaptation project thought out on a larger scale involving urban issues and lead to evolution in nature conservation in the context of climate change. This involves many changes at different scales for coastal areas, so it is interesting to study the way in which local communities are involved in these projects. Case studies in the United Kingdom, Germany and France will support the demonstration, based on semi-directive interviews with site managers. Sometimes, agricultural land were gradually purchased to transform the site with a vast operation of wetland restoration to create a mosaic of environments partly reconnected to marine dynamics. Other times an exceptional one-off event has transformed the site without human planning. These wetlands’ environmental trajectory is a mean of understanding how these projects are constructed, in terms of political and social logic in particular, in order to analyse the process leading to ecological restoration, the obstacles that have been encountered but also the way in which these have been overcome. Are there determinants that will enable us to better understand these projects, to understand the transformation of the sites in the future, and what levers can be used to improve their acceptability to local communities?

In Europe, strategies for thinking coastal adaptation to face sea level rise or compensating habitats losses began around forty years ago, although in very different ways depending on which countries embarked on the process. Natural areas, whether protected or not, can be the starting point for an adaptation project thought out on a larger scale involving urban issues and lead to evolution in nature conservation in the context of climate change. This involves many changes at different scales for coastal areas, so it is interesting to study the way in which local communities are involved in these projects. Case studies in the United Kingdom, Germany and France will support the demonstration, based on semi-directive interviews with site managers. Sometimes, agricultural land were gradually purchased to transform the site with a vast operation of wetland restoration to create a mosaic of environments partly reconnected to marine dynamics. Other times an exceptional one-off event has transformed the site without human planning. These wetlands’ environmental trajectory is a mean of understanding how these projects are constructed, in terms of political and social logic in particular, in order to analyse the process leading to ecological restoration, the obstacles that have been encountered but also the way in which these have been overcome. Are there determinants that will enable us to better understand these projects, to understand the transformation of the sites in the future, and what levers can be used to improve their acceptability to local communities?