Dealing with impact. An interdisciplinary, multi-site ethnography of environmental impact assessment in the coastal zone

• Published in: Natures Sciences Sociétés
• Main Authors: Mazé Camille, Coston-Guarini Jennifer, Danto Anatole, Lambrechts Adrien, Ragueneau Olivier
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: French
• Published: EDP Sciences 2018
• Subjects: impact; coastal zone; decision-making process; knowledge; interest; Science; Q; Social Sciences; H; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1051/nss/2018050; https://doaj.org/article/68847c42b77144d4a8e1428efba4142f

The SPA (“Savoir, Pouvoir, Avoir”) project (CNRS, 2017-2019) presented in this article focuses on the ways French society deals with the issue of environmental impact – from the vast question of impact in the context of global change and the issue of the measurement of impact in science, to the specific case of the public policy instrument known as “environmental impact assessment”. Impact is considered as a boundary object at the intersection of several fields of inquiry which captures both the architecture and the dynamics of relationships between “savoir” (scientific and lay knowledge), “pouvoir” (power and decision) and “avoir” (economy/appropriation), that aggregate different interests around the sustainable management of coastal socio-ecological systems. Three sites were selected along a north-south gradient of Long-Term Ecological Research sites: the Bay of Brest and the Iroise Sea, the National Nature Reserve of the French islands in the Southern Ocean and the overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. The approach of the SPA project is to link concretely social sciences, natural sciences and engineering sciences on these study sites, in an interdisciplinary, multi-site and multi-scale methodology that makes it possible to reveal the conditions for the possible – or impossible – implementation of sustainable management of coastal socio-ecological systems.