Biodiversité

This paper analyses changes in the governance of urban nature in French urban policies over the past two decades. It demonstrates that the importance of “sustainable development” procedural principles has significantly declined in public policy agendas, a decline that has occurred alongside the rise to prominence of sectoral approaches based on performance and control, whether they focus on climate or urban biodiversity policies. Faced with these transformations in public action—namely the emergence of a centralized and sectoral management of urban policies ill-suited to the complex socio-environmental territories—collective movements in civil society are developing initiatives based on cooperation across territories.