Waiting for dams. Governing the temporalities of water scarcity in South-western France

How does environmental public action govern the heterogeneous temporalities of the social and natural worlds? To contribute answering this question, this paper critically studies the policies deployed to govern water scarcity in South-western France for more than thirty years. This paper shows the ambiguity associated to the construction of an environmental reference state for rivers corresponding to management threshold based on a modeled representation of rivers pristine state. To do so, this paper analyses the manner actors involved in the design and implementation of public policies try to render planning and crisis management consistent, thanks to common indicators. This paper discusses the manner actors create new rooms for maneuver by negotiating modeling methods and, by doing so, disarm environmental concerns.