Joint Study Day organised by the EJJE (Environmental Justice) network
and Research Area 2 of the GIS Democracy and Participation
‘Greening democracy, democratising ecology’
Co-organised by Renda Belmallem, Paula Cossart, Nadège Degbelo, Valérie Deldrève, Jean-Michel Fourniau, Patrice Melé, Héloïse Nez and Cyrielle Vaillant
The programme and the introductory text for the seminar can be downloaded via this link.
Social science literature, and more broadly within the field of environmental justice, has highlighted the harmful effects of an elitist Western framing of ecological concerns, as well as the diversity of relationships with the environment across different regions of the world, countries and social groups. It thus acknowledges the existence of an ‘ecology of the poor’ or a ‘subsistence ecology’ in the ‘Global South’, based on the defence of land, water and forests… against extractivist practices (Martinez-Alier, 2014; Naoufal, 2016). At the same time, it acknowledges the existence of a popular, or even working-class, form of environmentalism, evident in the struggles waged by workers’ organisations against the health and environmental risks caused by the expansion of industrial activities worldwide (Rector, 2014; Barca, 2015; Corral Broto, 2015).
The concept of ‘popular ecology’ has been gaining ground in recent years, including in France, where it is promoted both within activist circles (Ouassak, 2023) and in academic circles (Comby and Malier, 2021; Belmallem, 2021; Billen, 2023). In the face of dominant conceptions of ecology and energy transition policies that aim to reform everyday behaviours, particularly in working-class neighbourhoods, this approach helps to highlight residents’ environmental concerns and to reframe their consumption practices—which are stigmatised despite having a far smaller environmental impact than those of wealthier populations (Pye et al., 2008). It is also in response to another energy transition measure (the carbon tax) that researchers are drawing on the concept of ‘popular ecology’ to refute the notion that the Yellow Vests movement lacks ‘concern’ for sustainability, and to interpret their opposition to the carbon tax in the light of the socio-environmental injustices they have suffered (Levain et al., 2022) . The unequal effects of the social distribution of the burden imposed by public policies are not limited to the energy transition, but also characterise water and biodiversity policies in mainland France and its overseas territories (Deldrève, Candau and Noûs, 2021). To speak of ‘popular ecology’ in this context is to recognise the diversity of practices relating to ‘nature’, knowledge and attachments, which are obscured by the normative injunctions regarding the ‘proper use of nature’ found in biodiversity conservation policies. This perspective also highlights the failure to take this diversity into account, or indeed its denial or erasure.
In the case of the ‘Global South’, overseas territories or even working-class neighbourhoods in mainland France, popular ecology is an ecology intertwined with the history of the racialisation of populations in these areas (Keucheyan, 2015). Its full recognition calls for an approach that is decolonial (Ferdinand, 2019; Thiann-Bo Morel, forthcoming), anti-racist and intersectional approach. Often linked to the world of work and a working-class history, this form of ecology can also be that of class fractions, of the most precarious social statuses and the jobs most exposed to risk (Diaw, 2024). In any case, it can only be pluralistic, its unity resting on the breaking down of barriers between social and ecological struggles and on a transformation of perspectives regarding the interconnections between the social and the ecological.
The controversies surrounding this recognition centre in particular on the appropriate terminology: ‘ecologism’ or ‘environmentalism’; ‘popular’, ‘social’, ‘of the poor’ or ‘working-class’, as well as on the relationship to the political sphere that it underpins. If the material conditions of existence shape the environmental concerns of the working classes and communities, in both the ‘North’ and the ‘South’, and if their environmental and social concerns are closely intertwined, what would be the social or working-class specificity of a form of political ecology (Bookchin, 1993; Lejeune, 2023)? Conversely, if the recognition of one or more forms of popular ecology stems from a critique of social and environmental inequalities and from an overly narrow or inappropriate framing of what constitutes ecology, should environmental concerns be regarded as a constant inherent in the lifestyles of the poorest, or does this amount to imposing an interpretative framework that cannot make sense in all contexts? Finally, are these concerns solely the product of everyday material constraints? When they form part of a broader critique of society or capitalism, what alternative values and utopian visions do they then embody?
This study day focuses on these questions relating to the political significance of popular ecologies. They encompass not only the meaning attributed to them but also, consequently, the implications of their recognition for ecology. How does this recognition contribute to the democratisation of ecology, and how does this translate (or fail to translate) into institutional practice (Claeys and Jacqué, 2012)? How do these issues relate to forms of decolonisation within ecology? Whilst such recognition benefits from the work of trade unions (Bécot, 2015; Stevis, 2021) and the development of socio-ecological movements (Grisoni and Nemoz, 2017) or movements for climate and environmental justice (Lajarthe and Laigle, 2024; Coolsaet and Deldrève, 2023), it is also partly driven by certain public institutions. Indeed, faced with the limitations of their participatory mechanisms, the issue of including racialised working-class people and recognising their rights, connections to the land and knowledge has been placed on the agenda. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)² and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have charted a course towards involving indigenous and local communities in the development of knowledge and agreements (Nachet, 2021). However, despite being the result of decades of struggle on the international stage, this recognition is often limited to a UN-centric or narrow conception of indigeneity (Bouet, 2016), which never challenges the socio-political construction of the ‘old nations’ of Europe. This perspective homogenises the territories of the ‘South’ just as much as those of the ‘North’ – particularly rural areas and working-class neighbourhoods – which have a history of internal colonisation and forms of environmental violence. How, then, can we open up alternative paths? What forms of political representation and participation ‘as equals’ (Fraser, 2011) might the recognition of grassroots ecologies lead to? What arenas or institutional frameworks should be utilised or devised in a national and international context that is not particularly conducive to the expression of social and ecological criticism and protest, particularly when such criticism and protest contain the seeds of a challenge to the nation-state? Which political forces are mobilised or could be mobilised on these issues? Finally, what counter-movements does this recognition generate, or is it likely to generate?
