Thesis title: The nature of durability. An investigation on Marine Protected Areas in Tunisia
Supervisor: Fabian Muniesa and Béatrice Cointe
Protected areas are one of the main instruments of biodiversity conservation policies worldwide. While they primarily appear as a spatial mechanism – a zoning tool – they are also a temporal mechanism: to conserve and protect is to maintain over time, to build durability. Drawing on a multi-sited investigation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Tunisia and adopting a Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspective, this thesis explores this temporal dimension by analyzing the instruments established to develop MPAs: funding mechanisms, governance rules, maps, and databases. The thesis demonstrates that each of these instruments generates distinct forms of durability, in which power relations between conservation stakeholders (funders, administrations, local or regional NGOs, scientists) are crystallized.