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

• Main Authors: Mazé, Camille, Coston-Guarini, Jennifer, Danto, Anatole, Lambrechts, Adrien, Ragueneau, Olivier
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: French
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: impact; zone côtière; processus de décision; savoir; intérêts; coastal zone; decision-making process; knowledge; interest; envir; archi; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=NSS_263_0328

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. Le projet SPA (Savoir, Pouvoir, Avoir) (CNRS, 2017-2019) présenté dans cet article se concentre sur la manière dont la société française aborde la question de lʼimpact environnemental – de son évaluation et sa mesure à son traitement. Le processus réglementaire de lʼ « étude dʼimpact environnemental » qui consiste en lʼanalyse préalable des impacts potentiels prévisibles dʼune activité donnée sur lʼenvironnement est donc placé ici au cœur de nos préoccupations dans ce projet qui considère lʼimpact comme un objet frontière, à lʼintersection de plusieurs champs, permettant de saisir lʼarchitecture et la dynamique des relations entre savoir ...