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Preface

The distance of man’s emancipation from the sea is equal to the distance of our cells from the composition of sea water.

Loren Eiseley

The purpose of this book is to strengthen the path towards a coastal maritime management where civil maritime engineering is intimately linked with environmental engineering, within a socio-ecosystem where humanity is an integral part of nature. The multiple consequences of the mistreatment of nature by a denatured human will not be discussed in this book. Indeed, it seems to us that the links between the artificialization of the seabed, climate change, pollution, the introduction of invasive species or the overexploitation of natural resources with a deregulated, predatory and irresponsible anthropic activity for the future of ecosystems and the survival of humanity (on our unique Earth) are obvious (IPBES 2019). Neither are we prophets, as the concepts discussed here have already been the subject of modern works (Belknap et al. 1967; Falque 1972; Tarlet 1977) or of older, empirical findings, where humans have also illustrated themselves in their capacity for positive interactions with nature (McHarg 1969; Lassus 2002).

The geographer and planner McHarg (1969)¹ detected that in our current modern societies (since the second half of the 20th century), technicists, industrialists and urbanists have an attitude to the human that is dissociated, pre-Copernican and dominant towards nature. The source of this segregative reflection is that we have been fed by an ancient instinct of revenge towards nature, born of a 1,000-year-old resentment of having held so little influence before nature. Psychoanalysts would call this a “complex of cultural inferiority, with perverse aggressive tendency”, that is, without consideration, nor empathy, nor feeling for the tormented object. This conception of nature, which is the subject of our predation, would satisfy the desire for primacy buried deep within the human being, for a long time inoffensive since impossible to achieve technically. How can we make this resentment, which we have historically inherited as a consequence of our environment, null and void? How can we prevent it from poisoning the objective of survival and evolution of a human who can now “stand up among the other forms of life” (McHarg 1969)? The expression of our work on eco-design is rooted in our enthusiasm to assert our talents as creators, rather than those of destroyers who are less worthy to represent responsible humans, the managers of their environment and thus of their future.

This exercise is, moreover, made difficult by the Western conception founded on an anthropocentrism disassociated with nature, notably spiritually (Berque 1986). The oriental approach, for example, the Japanese approach using Tao, Shinto or Zen, has sometimes ignored the human as an individual to focus on the human within nature (the garden being the metaphysical symbol par excellence).

In short, two reverse postulates exist: in the West, the human at the expense of nature, and, in the East, nature at the expense of the individual human. The third view would be that of a balance, which does not mean a fusion, where the human is considered as an individual, rather than as a species, within nature.

To date, however, this way has not been expressed in human “works” presented on the maritime domain (principally the submerged part), which have never taken into account natural facts in their intrinsic conception. It is the human against nature, which is understood in maritime engineering as a vocabulary of work or technique: works of defense against the sea, breakwaters, dikes, wave-breaking walls, seawalls, dredging, etc.

On the contrary, land constructions have long been based on a local empirism (the vernacular), allowing humans to observe nature and to settle there harmoniously. The low stone walls follow the curves of hillsides where the peasantry, better than any other profession, know by observation how to exploit and manage the land. There are also our medieval “circulade” Mediterranean villages, where the air circulates wonderfully and naturally refreshes the shaded alleys, offering nesting boxes to swallows and swifts feasting on mosquitoes near the houses. Contrast this with the modern suburbs on the outskirts of these same villages which are asphyxiated, overheated by increasing heat waves and have often disfigured the harmony of the landscape.

We are convinced that the construction of structures must be sensitive to the laws and needs of nature, to ecosystems, to materials and forms adapted to human needs and to the beauty of life, and thus offer sustainable achievements. Eco-design will therefore be adapted to the place and will bring long-term benefits to humans and nature. It is based on ecology, from the Greek oikos, or house, that is, the science of the dwelling, an obvious prerequisite for any development whose objective is to arrange with order (and according to the rules of ecology, of the human in nature) human settlements, with a view to sustainable and desirable development: managing life to ensure our survival.

The temptation and the drift towards a cosmetic nature, a simple green washing, is always present, but a detailed knowledge of the natural functioning and of the typical ecosystem for each site and each project, targeting an integration between the ecological and aesthetic landscape, as well as an ecological follow-up of the developments, are the guarantees to keep a good course. We will have at least tried to advance the notion that the human can play the role of positive creator for their environment, improving the biosphere with new symbioses of humans in nature.

In this work, we propose to focus on marine structures. Indeed, coastal structures, although not specifically designed for this purpose, generate new biotopes that are particularly attractive for coastal species at the juvenile stage: for example, 30–109 times more juveniles are welcomed on dikes and harbors than on natural rocky habitats in the western French Mediterranean (Pastor 2008).

However, these ecological potentialities are ignored, or at best incidentally recognized and very rarely enhanced by specific eco-designed and nature-inspired infrastructures. Marine works are generally designed with regard to functional, technical, economic or hydro-sedimentary marine environment considerations, not as supports to maintain or increase marine biodiversity.

The objective is now to develop their functional aspects from an ecological point of view so that the structure becomes a proactive element for the environment. It becomes part of a dynamic ecosystem by creating habitats and ecological functions: shelter for juveniles, feeding areas, habitats for fixed fauna and flora, etc.

This book first offers the reader two chapters related to the developments in the fields of environmental regulation and maritime civil engineering, increasingly expressing a social expectation towards the prefix “eco-”. Indeed, every planner must design a facility in response to a functional and technical need, meeting regulatory standards.

However, beyond this “classic” approach to marine development projects, the eco-design approach presented in Chapter 3 allows environmental impacts to be taken into account from the technical definition of the works. The authors illustrate this approach in Chapter 4 with practical examples that they have dealt with, complemented by feedback from projects carried out according to these principles and attempting to avoid running the risk of justifying avoidable projects by their “green” appearance. It is always preferable to abandon a project if its negative effects on the environment are unavoidable, because offset is a Trojan horse for the development that is thus facilitated, as denounced by Firth et al. (2020): “Greening of grey infrastructure should not be used as a Trojan horse to facilitate coastal development.”

Sylvain Pioch

Jean-Claude Souche

July 2021

1 1 The work of McHarg in the area of landscape architecture, gathered in his famous Design with Nature, served as a basis for our extrapolation to the submerged, underwater marine domain.