CONTEXT
” Les rapports scientifiques convergent pour qualifier le XXIᵉ siècle : il sera fluctuant. Notre seule certitude, c’est le maintien et l’amplification de l’incertitude. ” This statement by Olivier Hamant, biologist and researcher at INRAE, underlines the necessity of defining principles of action capable of guiding us in an unpredictable world.
Rather than striving to reproduce a model of absolute performance, based on competition, optimisation, and control, Olivier Hamant suggests drawing inspiration from living systems to promote another path: robustness.
This principle highlights cooperation, circularity, and adaptability as new lenses through which to interpret the world. It also encourages us to embrace a set of “sub-optimalities”—redundancy, error, chance, heterogeneity, slowness, etc.—that introduce flexibility into the system and preserve room for maneuver in the face of the unforeseen.
Given the growing interest in this concept and the positive perspectives it opens, the Fondation de France, Fondation Racines, and the Institut Michel Serres have committed to identifying and clarifying the key messages of robustness, in order to define its contours and facilitate its appropriation.
OBJECTIVES
- Propose a reference framework to strengthen the appropriation of the concepts of robustness and common health
- Establish a shared basis of understanding to scale up these concepts
- Identify emblematic examples of robustness in territories
- Formulate recommendations to operationalize the concept of robustness at the territorial level
- Produce a synthesis of communication tools around the concept of robustness
