1The ski resorts of La Clusaz and Le Grand Bornand, and their eponymous municipalities, are part of the Thônes Valley Joint Local Authority (Communauté de Communes de la Vallée de Thônes, CCVT) in the Haute-Savoie département of France. Both resorts are in the Aravis Mountains (figure 1). Having been associated with skiing since the early decades of the twentieth century, they fall within the “first generation” category in Knafou’s (1978) typology of ski resorts. First-generation resorts are recognizable by the continuity between an existing village and its winter sports infrastructure, generally installed by local private investors.

2The Aravis Mountains’ three ski resorts are currently separate, with each having its own ski area and a locally controlled tourism sector. Figure 2 shows each resort’s altitude, size, and snow-making capacity.

Figure 2. Characteristics of the ski resorts in the Aravis Mountains

	Bottom altitude	Top altitude	Size of the ski area	Number of ski lifts	Vertical transport meters per hour	Number of ski trails	Kilometers of ski trails	Number of snow cannons	Percentage of the area covered by artificial snow
La Clusaz – Manigod	1100 m	2600 m	375 ha	49	16,332.5	84	125	277	27.7%
Le Grand Bornand	935 m	2050 m	352 ha	24	11,415	48	84	270	46%
Saint-Jean-de-Sixt	950 m	1020 m	2 ha	2	42	5	2.12	0	0%

© A. Troiano, 2021. Source: Presentation report, decision document, Fier-Aravis SCoT, 2019.

4La Clusaz’s and Le Grand Bornand’s ski areas are currently unconnected, separated by a mountain called the Tête du Danay (1731 m.), which lies on the boundary between the two municipalities. Proposals to link the two villages/ski areas via the Tête du Danay have been put forward on several occasions but have never come to fruition. However, the project reemerged when the Fier-Aravis Territorial Development Plan (Schéma de Cohérence Territoriale, SCoT) was revised between 2015 and 2019. This most recent version of the project is included in the Fier-Aravis SCoT as a “new structuring tourism unit” (Unité Touristique Nouvelle Structurante, UTNS) aimed at creating a fully linked “Grand Domaine Aravis” ski area. The new lifts on the Tête du Danay, which is currently devoid of skiing infrastructure, would replace the shuttle bus between the two villages and, according to the project’s supporters, enable them to attract a more international clientele.

5Because projects to extend ski areas are now quite rare, they are more noticeable, more frequently criticized, and more strongly opposed, generally on environmental grounds, than during the days when they came “one after the other.” The requirement to include such projects in municipal and inter-municipal development plans (plans local d’urbanisme, PLUs) and in territorial development plans (SCoTs), set out in France’s Mountain Act of 2016, further increases their exposure, as shown by the appeals against the Maurienne SCoT (see Conclusion). At a time of intense debate over issues such as the “all-skiing” economy, skiing’s economic importance to mountain communities, climate change, and artificial snow, the Tête du Danay project encapsulates the question of how mountain areas should evolve.

6The present paper contributes to the field of political and environmental geography (Laslaz, 2017) and “geocontroversy” (Laslaz, 2005). It also provides insights into conflict phenomena, that is, “the characteristics and processes of an ensemble of conflictual situations in an area (people involved, types of manifestation, duration, intensity, media coverage, spatial frequency). The geographical study of conflictuality involves analyzing the social, spatial, and temporal dynamics of opposition in which a space is either the object, medium, or symbol of this opposition, or impacted by it” (Cadoret, 2012). Without going into the structural or historical determinants of conflictuality, ski resorts have long had a tense relationship with the issue of environmental protection and have therefore generated innumerable controversies (Laslaz, 2016). Environmental conflict “describes a strong opposition between actors, expressed via different levels of violence, that are triggered by a facility, infrastructure, or protection policy (projected or implemented) that modifies a familiar (daily, weekly, seasonal) environment (in the wide sense) for actors who use the environment or who live near it. Hence, conflict is local and regional and implies a co-presence” (Laslaz, 2020). But conflict is not always expressed, tangible, and pre-existing; it may be latent, underlying, and ready to ignite at the merest spark. This is why it is interesting to study a situation’s “conflict potential,” that is, a conflict’s precursors and the risks of it occurring. The Tête du Danay project’s conflict potential was revealed during the public consultation process and by the creation of protest groups.

7How did the revised Fier-Aravis SCoT resurrect the project to connect La Clusaz to Le Grand Bornand via the Tête du Danay? And, going beyond the potential for conflict over the project’s impact on the environment and land use, how did it become a conflict between differing representations of what the projected facilities symbolize and thereby lead to a process of territorialization on several scales?

8We addressed these questions by combining analyses of public inquiry and other documents relating to the SCoT, with field work (photographs) and with the results of 14 semi-structured interviews with local actors (farmers, local councilors, municipal planning officer, départemental planning officer, citizens’ groups, etc.). The fact that we had difficulty obtaining the interviews, with potential interviewees refusing our requests, not replying to requests, or insisting they were held out-of-sight, also demonstrates the subject’s controversial nature. All quotations from the interviews have been anonymized.

The Tête du Danay Link, a Sleeping Dog Awoken by the Fier-Aravis SCoT

9The idea of creating a ski connection between the two resorts has existed for several decades. Combining the Tête du Danay link with a ski-lift connection to the valley floor has strengthened the argument in favor of the most recent project.

An Off-On Project That Has Weighed on Local Debates for Decades

10A link between the two resorts via the Tête du Danay “is already there” (citizen’s group, March 1, 2021). It takes several forms (walking, mountain biking, cross-country skiing) and uses a forest track created by the three municipalities (figure 3). But it does not have “the effect of a linked ski area” (planning department official, March 22, 2021) because “we’re not in the Three Valleys” (id.).

11Proposals to upgrade the existing connection go back many years. From the first joint plan, translated into several languages for the 1966–1967 season, to the creation of the Aravis Ski Pass and shuttle-bus service in 1984–1985, the Aravis’ resorts have attempted to follow the trends triggered by France’s Plan Neige winter tourism development program. Although Le Grand Bornand’s mayor announced a “go-ahead in 1985–1986 and delivery in 1987-88” (Boutry, 1983–1984), the connection remained in abeyance until it was updated and included in the UTNS along the timeline shown in Figure 4.

12The Tête du Danay project is reminiscent of the currently suspended proposal to link La Clusaz’s and Le Grand Bornand’s golf courses. Indeed, our interviewees sometimes referred to the project’s on-off nature, calling it an issue that “keeps rearing its ugly head” and a “seasonal event” (planning department officer, March 17, 2021), or as an idea that “keeps coming round” (citizens group, March 1, 2021). This citizens’ group was formed to oppose the SCoT’s overall tourism development program, decided in 2019, before the public inquiry on the revised SCoT was held (December 7, 2019, to January 8, 2020). This inquiry beat all records in France, attracting 2,963 submissions (physical and online). The citizens’ group invited the project’s opponents to a meeting in Thônes in January 2020, which was attended by 400 people, including representatives of environmental protection groups, whose opinions can impact government thinking and vice versa (Mountain Wilderness, 2019).

The Desire to Create a Fully Linked Ski Area in a Context Some People Consider Unsuitable

13The initial project included four ski lifts, two of which were on the La Clusaz side, connecting the Tête du Danay to the center of the village and to the La Balme sector of the ski area (figure 5). However, Saint-Jean-de-Sixt withdrew from the project, thereby ending the ambition of turning the village into the “gateway to the future Grand Domaine Aravis” (SCoT Fier-Aravis, 2019) (figure 3).

14Nevertheless, the remaining part of the project, connecting La Clusaz to Le Grand Bornand, reawakened the desire to “offer a more attractive product, notably with respect to the standards of international competition” (CCVT, 2019) “in a largely globalized tourism economy” (id.) in which “the area’s connectedness, that is its capacity to be linked and its capacity to integrate the network of exchanges, is an important condition for its development” (id.). The ski trails served by the new lifts would allow the resorts to create a ski product with 212 km of fully linked trails over a new high point. This would be “a major step up” for the resorts (Fier-Aravis SCoT, 2019) and allow them to “market a larger ski area” (councilor, March 23, 2021). Being able to market the resort as having a much larger ski area is one of the main argument arguments put forward by local councilors, who one interviewee described as being “obsessed” with reaching 200 km of trails (départemental planning officer, March 24, 2021), presented as the number necessary to attract the attention of tour operators. The race to provide ever-more kilometers of ski trails has been an integral part of ski resorts’ development strategies since the first fully linked ski areas were created in the 1980s.

Associating the Tête du Danay Link with the Projected Valley Lift from Thônes to the Plateau de Beauregard

15The decision to locate one of the Tête du Danay lifts in the village of La Clusaz enabled the project to be sold as promoting low-impact transportation, as it would make the entire ski area accessible from the projected valley lift from Thônes to the Plateau de Beauregard (figure 6). This option “fits into a global approach to transportation for the entire area (La Clusaz Municipal Councilor, September 13, 2018) because it would “remove the fossil-fuel powered shuttle buses between the three municipalities” (CCVT, 2019) and eliminate the burning of fossil fuels “both for the inter-resort bus network and for private vehicles” (id.).

Arguments Against the Project

17Opponents’ arguments against the project fall into three main categories.

Environmental and Agricultural Objections

18One of the main points of contestation is the project’s environmental impact, notably its contribution to low-impact transportation. While some people accept that the new link could contribute to “decarbonized sustainable mobility” (mountain and environment protection association, March 26, 2021), others describe this argument as an “ecological pretext” (mountain guide, March 22, 2021) and a “con” (id.). For the project’s opponents, the environmental argument for the link is just “another line in the discourse” (citizen’s group, March 1, 2021) and a “marketing tool” (mountain and environment protection association, March 26, 2021) to “pinch the neighbor’s clients via an extra differentiating facility” (citizen’s group, March 1, 2021). Opponents are extremely skeptical about the project’s real objective. On the one hand, a low-impact transportation system would involve closing the road, and this will not happen, so “if it’s just to take a trip in a cable car, they’re better off taking the bus, which has less impact” (ski instructor, March 22,02021). One of our interviewees felt that “the question is valid, but the answer is wrong” (départemental planning officer, March 15, 2021). In addition to transportation, opposition is also based on associated developments, such as new ski trails and a reservoir to provide both drinking water and to feed snow-making machines. These facilities, and the lift stations, would be built below the Tête du Danay, on flatter ground, which would impact local farmers by taking up “good land and the only meadow we have” (farmer, March 22, 2021). The Aravis is a relatively preserved corner of the French Alps whose farming sector was boosted by the granting of AOC status to reblochon cheese in 1958, and opponents take a dim view of the new cableway and its associated infrastructure (building and widening of ski trails, construction of new ski lifts and new accommodations, etc.).

Increasing Snowmaking Capacity to Secure the “Ski Product”

20Artificial snow, “just like the migration of ski areas to higher altitudes and the search for links [between resorts], is a way of capitalizing on the snowpack by extending the areas with guaranteed snow” (Paccard et al., 2011). Links to other ski areas are likely to be more important for Le Grand Bornand, which is more dependent on artificial snow, than for its neighbor, La Clusaz, whose higher, narrow, north-facing coombes hold snow for longer (Spandre et al., 2019).

21Studies taking into account artificial snow suggest that skiing will remain feasible until 2030–2050. Hence, local politicians argue that “it may be worthwhile investing in this type of infrastructure” (councilor, March 23, 2021), basing their arguments on these “scientifically proven facts”, because “you have to base them on something” (id.). The discourses of actors with different points of view show a clear disparity in the way they interpret research findings. To this must be added interannual variations because “global warming does not yet function as one would like” (extreme skier, March 22, 2021), and “the weather does not play into the hands of [those in favor of slowing down and stopping ski resort development] because there was snow this year” (id.). Such rhetoric leads to the idea that “we’ve still got years ahead of us with winters like that” (land and planning department, March 22, 2021).

Spiraling Development

22The projected Tête du Danay link, added to the other projects in the Fier-Aravis SCoT, whose UTNS are dominated by ski area extension projects, is seen as belonging to another age of tourism (figure 8). It is necessary to “resituate the debate in the overall debate” (citizen’s group, 1.3.2021) because “we’ll have more snow, but they won’t have any more water” (id.), a comment that indicates the public’s growing awareness of the issues involved (Marcelpoil et al., 2010).

23The Tête du Danay project is criticized as being an “outdated vision” (citizen’s group, March 1, 2021) that “might have been relevant 40 years ago” (owner of a mountain hut, May 21, 2021), except that “here [at La Clusaz], they never wanted it” (citizen’s group, March 1, 2021). Projects to link ski resorts keep resurfacing because their proponents blame current problems or a failure to keep up with competitors on past failures to implement these projects: “That was considered at one time, but we didn’t do it. If things aren’t working, it’s because we didn’t do it” (member of the Comité du Massif des Alpes, March 26, 2021), so “we thought we should do it” (id.). It highlights the two resorts potentially divergent interests: The link is more important for Le Grand Bornand, but it would require the resort to build a new snow front.

25Some opponents of the Tête du Danay project see it as a “foot-in-the-door” (citizen’s group, March 1, 2021), as it will require an increase in the accommodation offer and the construction of new ski trails, culminating, step-by-step, in a global ski-area extension project, as envisaged by the Fier-Aravis SCoT’s eight UTNS (figure 8).

Controversies and Conflict Potential around a Project in the Balance

26This final section generalizes and conceptualizes the notion of conflict potential, illustrated by the spatialization of the conflict and the inadequate consultation decried by the project’s opponents.

Conflict Potential: A Proposed Theory

• The size of the spaces concerned, on a horizontal dimension.

• The number of scales on which the conflict takes place, in a vertical dimension.

• The number and/or extent of the objects involved in the conflict, which indicate its scope. In this case, the conflict involves both the Tête du Danay and the tourism infrastructure projects the link would generate in the area’s villages.

• The forms of violence used, which are both intrinsic components of a conflict and its culmination.

• The social density of the actors involved, that is, in addition to their number, their conflict potential (fourth meaning of this notion), defined as their ability to mobilize, to form networks, to oppose, and, possibly, to fight.

28The conflict potential of mountain resorts is the resultant of their social, economic, cultural, and political functioning—aspects that combine to form what Lahaye (2008) called the “pre-conflict environment”. The conflicts affecting resorts—over their existence, the values they project, their objectives—are real, but a simplistic reading according to which these conflicts “threaten” and weaken ski resorts is wrong. Indeed, conflicts are part of their nature and help improve the social interactions that animate them. More widely, “conflicts are not a disfunction of public actions but a general modality of their implementation” (Melé et al., 2003), a sort of regulation of its functioning. Melé (2013) later defined public action not as action by the public authorities, but as the sum of the actions bringing into play “all the individuals who consider themselves potentially affected by the consequences of a decision.” Thus, this concerns the numerous groups, both local and from further afield, that express their concerns and mobilize. Public action is the “product of interrelations between a limited number of organized actors,” according to a register that is no longer that of their hierarchy, as may have been the case in the past, but of exchange (Ollivier-Trigalo & Piéchaczyk, 2002), which expresses itself, notably, in information meetings or attempts at consultation.

29Environmental conflict and its potential reveal a local political geography that may provide a useful perspective from which to examine the Tête du Danay project, alongside “the obviously geopolitical question of the use, and therefore control, of the territory: What must it serve?” (Subra, 2018), and consequently whom and what it will benefit and according to what priorities. The answer depends on the balance of power between the actors and their respective interests in whether the project goes ahead.

30Therefore, the Tête du Danay project has conflict potential in terms of whether a conflict (especially environmental) will occur and through the resources created by this conflict. This conflict potential depends on whether the project’s end goal is a ski product or a transportation product, both of which have the potential to generate conflict.

31The growing conflictual dynamic can be summarized in a timeline (figure 10). This analysis shows the Tête du Danay UTNS to be “de-structuring” because its conflict potential highlights the duality of the perspectives for winter sports resorts, between further development and maintaining existing infrastructure, tourist practices, expectations, and acceptability, and also the ability to think beyond the “all ski” approach. From this point of view, supporters of this type of infrastructure highlight its bi-seasonal nature and its contribution to diversifying tourism, an argument the other side rejects.

The Spatial Construction of Conflict and the Uses of Consultation

32Because environmental conflict involves confrontations between individuals and their perceptions of a space, it can be defined as “the intersection of conflicts of persons, representations, and perceptions that project themselves and materialize themselves in a territory and an environment, or rather in each social group’s conception of this environment” (Laslaz, 2016). These individual conceptions may be associated with a conflict of uses, with different interests and uses of the space in a co-spaciality implying a co-presence. Conflicts associated with controversial development projects necessarily have a spatial basis, in terms of the actors involved and in terms of the space over which the conflict arises.

33The spatial basis of conflict, and what that implies, could have been invoked during the consultation phase for the revision of the Fier-Aravis SCoT. Consultation is the “process actors engage in to jointly manage one or more shared goods, spaces, or territories or to influence actions and decisions that will determine the future of these shared goods” (Beuret, 2006). Subra (2016) defined consultation as “a group of practices and procedures that include a territory’s population and institutional actors (or just the latter) in decisions concerning them.” Consultation appears indissociable from conflict and the conflict process because “rivalries between actors do not stop with the first public meeting” (id.); rather, they “continue to pursue the same objectives: for some, the adoption of the project; for others, its abandonment or substantial modification” (id.). In the case of the Tête du Danay project, the conflict began during the consultation process, with opponents complaining of local councilors speaking at public meetings “as if everything was set in stone” (citizen’s group, March 1, 21) and of projects being drawn up “behind local people’s backs” (member of the Comité du Massif des Alpes, March 26, 21). However, some of the “people involved in the project” (id.), that is, municipal councilors who voted to approve the revised Fier-Aravis SCoT, told the public inquiry that there had been little consultation between them during the revision process before the SCoT was approved. Their avowals, which sound like a “mea culpa” (Observation n° 1276), indicate a lack of “intra-SCoT consultation.” Indeed, one local councilor said the vote took place “with no knowledge of the [the project’s] content and flaws, other than through a very evasive and highly incomplete presentation during a single council session during which [the councilors] had to vote straight away, with no time to reflect” (id.). This opinion was shared at the inter-municipal level: “we rarely go against the opinion of the municipalities, which brought us to the SCoT that we produced” (CCVT, April 29, 21). Hence, the CCVT tends to approve projects proposed by its individual municipalities without reviewing them critically (id.). This occurred explicitly during the consultation phases, but also implicitly, as shown by the large percentage of people who asked to express their opinions anonymously (30%) because “people do not feel free to speak” (citizen’s group, March 1, 21). Especially given that some council members “did not agree on [the consultation]… [with] other councilors who have more classic approaches… [who prefer] the old method” (councilor, April 29, 21) in which citizens are presented with the finalized project and do not take part in the decision-making process.

34Thus, the conflict potential revealed by the consultation arose from a process of appropriating space, which impacts the way this space is developed. Each actor in the conflict mobilizes representations and values and stigmatizes their opponents’ positions according to their differing visions of the general interest, inducing a power struggle: Bringing together individuals with similar values and representations creates a shared vision and a feeling of solidarity. The consultation may attempt to reconcile the various actors’ different interests and modify the project so as to orient the conflict potential toward a solution, which can range from a compromise to the project being abandoned. Nevertheless, given these different perspectives, it may be interesting to study each actor’s satisfaction with the chosen (or imposed) solution and to compare it with the strength of their investment at the start of the conflict (figure 11).

35Hence, conflict is useful because it is a socio-spatial constructor and reveals a latent territoriality. It can even lead to “the introduction of innovative governance mechanisms” (Cattaruzza & Sintès, 2011). Conversely, if conflict is “ignored or left uncontrolled, it may reappear in other contexts as soon as the opportunity arises, with the risk of thwarting other projects” (Kirat & Torre, 2008). It “bounces from one project to another as long as it is not managed, and every new project risks being hijacked by the territory’s latent conflicts” (id.). Many of our interviewees referred to this aspect of conflict through their use of phrases such as “it’ll come up again” (extreme skier and famer, March 22, 21) to describe the Tête de Danay link and other SCoT tourism projects.

Conclusion

La Clusaz town council, minutes of the meeting of 13 September 2018.