The Culture’s Interface Between Human’s Economy and Ecosphere’s Integrity—The EcoSensible Sphere, a New Concept to Study an Art-Mediated Salt Marsh Restoration
摘要
From Holocene to Anthropocene, human activities, aka the anthroposphere, have resulted in disconnection and domination with the rest of the environment, namely the ecosphere. This can be schematized by a polarized Nature-Culture continuum, more or less distant. Since the post-World War II, the “great acceleration” exacerbated the primacy of the short-term economy over the long-term ecosphere but also the mid-term culture. The international platforms (UNO, IPCC, IPBES) and concepts (sustainable development goals, planetary boundaries, global safety net) have gradually raised awareness, emergency and stewardship. Coastal resilience or sato-umi help translate the previous initiatives to the coastal zone. This research introduces the EcoSensible Sphere, as a novel scheme to re-balance the economy and culture, and thus re-integrate the anthroposphere into the ecosphere. That framework is applied to a coastal marsh in restoration (Beaussais in Brittany), in which the socio-culture, reflected by an artwork (“Relier: à l’abri dans la marée”, a 20-m wooden intertidal installation) successfully interfaces the socio-economy with the ecosphere. The artwork has acted as an ecotone-like (with emerging properties) exchange component to improve the social acceptability of the sea’s and salt marsh’s return, playing the role of a nature-based adaptation to the sea level rise, and also of an innovative sustainable economy, based on art sightseeing and eco-tourism.