The seminar “Economic expertise and environmental actions” welcomes
Charlotte Glinel and Nelly Parès
Forest valorization
This session will explore the intertwining of valuation processes, forest management technologies and public policies in the valuation and management of forests in France.
Charlotte Glinel
Valuing forests in the Anthropocene? The new faces of forest exploitatione
Victims of climate change, France’s forests are also defined in the climate and forestry arenas as allies in the fight against it. Whether in the context of France’s Low Carbon National Strategy, or in the discourse of forestry and timber industry professionals, forests are presented as “carbon sinks”. This symbolic valuation of forests, which has led to conservationist framing in other latitudes, as well as to their financial valuation in the form of carbon credits, justifies another, more traditional form of economic valorization in France: the intensification of forest exploitation.
This presentation shifts the focus away from the emblematic regions of forest industrialization, and looks at how intensive silvicultural systems are discreetly and technically integrated into the management of more “multifunctional” forests in the Vosges and Mediterranean massifs. It is based on a multi-level qualitative survey of senior civil servants, researchers and activists, as well as field forest managers and workers. It will show how the implementation of knowledge rooted in the interactions between workers, harvesting machines and forests adds substance to the political and silvicultural agendas for French forests. At the crossroads of sociology of techniques, public action and environmental humanities, the presentation sheds light on the valorization of forests through a sociology of ecological work.
Nelly Parès
Between economy and ecology: hybridizations and value debates in the French Mediterranean forests
Climate change, biodiversity erosion, landscapes and living environments, since the 1980s and 1990s, forest areas have become the focus of renewed social and political concern. As debates on silvicultural practices and their institutionalization within public forestry and environmental policy unfold, the discourse of scientific ecology is taking on an increasingly prominent role. Drawing on an analysis of the design and implementation of public policies, together with discourse and textual analysis, this presentation will examine the social work involved in interpreting the central concepts of scientific ecology by the various actors involved in forest management (owners, managers, political decision-makers, associations, users of forests for leisure activities), with a particular focus on Mediterranean forests with ecological, social and economic characteristics that place them on the periphery of the industrial sector. Based on a typology of three major conceptions of the forest and its management (productive forest, forest-environment and forest-living-system), I will show that, far from merely opposing each other, ecological and economic discourses tend to interpenetrate and mutually support each other; and that, in contrast to the utilitarian and scientific-technical approach agreed upon by the proponents of the first two institutionalized conceptions, the living-forest-system allows actors far removed from the spheres of public policy-making (users, forestry associations) to support alternative practices and ways of thinking about the forest and its development.
Charlotte Glinel is currently completing her PhD at SciencePo’s Center for the Sociology of Organizations (CSO).
Nelly Parès is a researcher at the Museum National de l’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN)
Information and registration
Date: Friday, November 10, 11am-1pm
Venue: Mines Paris-PSL, 60 boulevard Saint Michel, 75006 Paris. Room L107
The seminar is held in French.
The session will also be streamed by videoconference. The link will be sent upon registration just before the seminar.
The seminar is open to all. Please register here to participate in this session.
Contact: Béatrice Cointe, Kewan Mertens or Alexandre Violle
Find out more about the programme
Photo sources: Charlotte Ginel, Sciences Po, CSO. Nelly Parès, MNHN. Rog01, “Forêt, Bourgogne, France“, 2014 (CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed).