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In Singapore, on 19 December 2020, a trendy restaurant served nuggets prepared with chicken meat grown by the company Eat Just. According to customers, this product was similar in taste and texture to 'conventional meat'. In the National Review, journalist Matthew Scully welcomes this innovation and emphasises its re-humanising character. The aim of our paper is to show that this innovation, described by the journalist as a 'civilisational milestone' is based on what Mauss called 'a merchant's moral'. Cultured meat refers to powerful economic issues and generates alliances that are more economic-political than ethical. Far from 'rehumanising' us, it leads instead to replacing the living work of humans and animals with the dead work of machines. In other words, it dehumanises us and enslaves us. To show this, we first question the notion of 'real meat' and the historical dynamics that have led this product to being part of a project of agriculture without breeding. We then question the links between these innovations and the 'defenders' of animals and the planet, and the representations of animals underlying these links. Finally, we show that the morality of the merchant who promotes cultured meat is opposed to the universal morality of gift that has been building our relationship with domestic animals for ten millennia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the emergence of cooperative photovoltaic projects in the Rhône-Alpes region (southeastern France) in the early 2010s marked by a national solar energy policy which at that time favoured the development of individual and private projects. The first part of the paper shows that in 2010 these projects emerged from converging national, regional and local dynamics and problematics. In the second part, the article analyzes the tribulations experienced by one of these collectives when it attempted to open the national incentive policy for photovoltaics to local issues which it did not take into account (redistribution and reinvestment of solar revenues, landscape and architectural innovation). Our analysis shows an innovative collective going through multiple trials in their attempt to initiate a territorial trajectory of energy transition that it deemed more equitable than the one then at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the conditions of emergence and the content of energy transition policies in shrinking cities. International academic literature considers shrinkage either as a factor favorable to alternative public policies, particularly in the field of sustainable development, or as a check to their acting capacities due to the multifactorial crises that hit shrinking cities. This paper is based on a case study of Vitry-le-François, archetypal of a small shrinking town in France. Two hypotheses are considered. In the first, urban shrinkage appears as a favorable context for an energy transition policy when the intensity and severity of the shrinkage process leads to a major crisis. In the second, energy transition policies applied to shrinking cities involve a course of action that extends beyond the energy sector and affects the whole of the urban policies in order to address the shrinkage phenomenon itself. The first part of the paper analyses the role of urban shrinkage and of the crisis affecting the local social housing landlord in the emergence of energy transition policies. The second part describes the content of the local energy policy transition and shows that this policy is focused on the rescue of the heating network owned by the social housing landlord, and on economic redevelopment issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theoretical assessment of alternative food models performance in implementing Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to improve urban food security. It addresses the three most widely related models in the food systems' literature: The Territorialized Food System, the City-Region Food System (CRFS), and the emerging Smart Urban Food System (SUFS). Nested in the sustainable urban planning field, it assumes that a correlation exists between the urban proximity of the alternative food models and their performance in integrating the Sustainable Development Goals. The valuation is based on a multi-criteria analysis which crosses two approaches: a normative one by Sustainable Development Goals and an operational one by sustainable urban planning. The proposed method is intended to be holistic and systemic unlike existing agricultural sustainability assessment methods. Scores are interpreted by rates of adequacy of sustainable urban planning targets to the Sustainable Development Goals and of appropriation of the latter by the urban ecosystem domains. Results show different profiles of models, suggesting a functional complementarity between them. However, the Smart Urban Food System would be the best performing model with rates higher than the global minimum sustainability threshold. It is followed by the City-Region Food System, confirming then our initial hypothesis. Results discussion points out the limits of the evaluation in terms of the approach objectivity, contextualization of the analysis and applicability constraints of the Smart Urban Food System. Finally, the study opens a research perspective on the operational Smart Urban Food System modeling, for which this work is the first step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The circular economy concept is currently being used in multiple ways. For some academics and organizations circular economy can be identified as a long term goal of achieved green growth while others argue that circular economy is fundamentally different from green growth. In this paper, we explore the conditions allowing green growth to be compatible with the concept of circular economy. Our model explicitly takes into account the possibility of a dematerializing of wealth production and raw material recycling through a green growth framework. We show that the reconciling of green growth with circular economy requires: (i) a fast decrease of the raw material intensity of economy far removed from present and past trajectories, (ii) the absence of a physical limitation to this decrease. This seems to indicate that green growth is essentially different from, and incompatible with the concept of circular economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the feedback from the project leaders on the management of interdisciplinarity involving 14 scientific projects (3 networks and 11 research projects) that are part of a program on the integrated management of animal health, and from researchers participating in the overall management of the program. The difficulties encountered by the project leaders relate to a need for acculturation among disciplines, to the equilibrium and mutual respect between disciplines within the project, to the lack of time dedicated to the scientific animation of the project, and to the difficulty of publishing interdisciplinary work. The level of interdisciplinarity varies among projects, from juxtaposition of several disciplines to their actual integration. Recommendations proposed to future project leaders at the various steps of a projet involve the co-design step, in order to facilitate the decentering of disciplinary questioning, the implementation step requiring an agile management, and the report step, in order to analyse how interdisciplinarity has shifted disciplinary lines and modified initial questions. Strengthening of interdisciplinary programs should prioritize the training of researchers in interdisciplinarity, provide support for the conception of interdisciplinary projects, and analyse the degree to which integration of disciplines was achieved in the projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theoretical assessment of alternative food models performance in implementing Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to improve urban food security. It addresses the three most widely related models in the food systems’ literature: The Territorialized Food System, the City-Region Food System (CRFS), and the emerging Smart Urban Food System (SUFS). Nested in the sustainable urban planning field, it assumes that a correlation exists between the urban proximity of the alternative food models and their performance in integrating the Sustainable Development Goals. The valuation is based on a multi-criteria analysis which crosses two approaches: a normative one by Sustainable Development Goals and an operational one by sustainable urban planning. The proposed method is intended to be holistic and systemic unlike existing agricultural sustainability assessment methods. Scores are interpreted by rates of adequacy of sustainable urban planning targets to the Sustainable Development Goals and of appropriation of the latter by the urban ecosystem domains. Results show different profiles of models, suggesting a functional complementarity between them. However, the Smart Urban Food System would be the best performing model with rates higher than the global minimum sustainability threshold. It is followed by the City-Region Food System, confirming then our initial hypothesis. Results discussion points out the limits of the evaluation in terms of the approach objectivity, contextualization of the analysis and applicability constraints of the Smart Urban Food System. Finally, the study opens a research perspective on the operational Smart Urban Food System modeling, for which this work is the first step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different intervention mechanisms are proposed to transform agricultural landscapes so that they fulfill multiple functions, compatible with sustainable development goals. In the case of climate change mitigation and adaptation, support policies and direct payments to affected populations are promoted as part of REDDþ initiatives. These interventions attempt to balance the provision of multiple ecosystem services with the maintenance or improvement of local livelihoods. In this paper, we explore the role that participatory evaluation can play in the implementation of payments for ecosystem services in rural communities in Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam and China. Engaged in a process of rapid integration into the market economy, these communities have been transforming their traditional Slash-and-burn systems in recent years and followed different paths of agricultural intensification. The positive or negative assessment of these developments is necessarily subject to value judgements in the choices made between different options. Ecosystem services allow for the comparison of landscape trajectories. Village communities explored scenarios for the evolution of their local agriculture, negotiated trade-offs between ecosystem services and identified potential “winners” and “losers”. These simulations showed the importance of the timing of REDDþ programs in relation to ongoing agrarian transformations. They point to the risk of moving away from the initial ambitions related to the carbon ecosystem service to become an additional instrument for sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context and background: The concept of social accountability in health (SAH) is emerging as a major challenge, at the moment when the health systems are more than ever in difficulty and when society as a whole encounters new events linked to a pandemic that forces our main preoccupations towards a necessary paradigm shift. Objective: This paper offers a brief retrospective of the notion of accountability, from that of social responsibility in entrepreneurship, under the light of the human sciences (philosophy, anthropology, sociology) and discuss how the concept concerns the core of the professional exercise in health. Analysis: How can the social and environmental preoccupations be integrated in the daily medical practice without overloading the already overburden of the health professionals? Several hypotheses are conditioning this process: one of which is the introduction of a systemic thought, making possible a transformative action, a commitment around the values, a co-management with all the professionals and the involved stakeholders. This hypothesis draws the contours of a broadened definition of the SAH, including all actors of health and correlated activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societies are facing social ecosystemic crises which affect the highly anthropized and globalized Planet and which constitute major issues and a huge challenge for the future. Addressing these issues requires facing the very tough complexities of extensively anthropized ecosystems whose understanding demands interaction between the full range of environmental sciences (ESs), i.e. earth, life, human and societal sciences. Interdisciplinarity is not an option, but a structural constraint. The author presents a comprehensive interdisciplinarity facility which he designed within the French CNRS and implements since 2007 to address with this situation: the Human-Environment Observatories (Observatoires hommes-milieux, OHMs). Thirteen of these have been created in France and in other countries in 2019. In 2012 they were the French Governement's PIA1 laureate with the Labex DRIIHM (InterDisciplinary Research Facility on Human-Environment Interactions) for an 8 years funding which has just been renewed for 5 years (2020-2024). The OHMs are dedicated to the study of heavily anthropized sites hit by a "disrupting event" which has upset the ecological, economic and social balances that have developed over decades in the local socio-ecological conditions (for instance, a coalfield mine and its shutdown). In this paper, the author states the qualities needed for this interdisciplinary work in order to deal with these social ecological issues, and specifies the definition of multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinarity. He remarks that, within the OHMs, an "enlightened disciplinarity" spontaneously develops between all ESs due to a heuristic open-minded attitude called "indisciplinarity". Three examples of this mode of functioning are presented. They highlight the flexibility and simplicity of the process and its efficacy in developing links among scientists and between these and society in a sustainable development outlook. The OHMs facility provides one of the possibilities to take up the challenge of confronting the hypercomplex ecosytemic crises that arise in highly anthropised socio-ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific discourses are influenced by worldviews and values shared by scientific communities. In terms of sustainable development, as for other subjects, the production, dissemination and reception of knowledge structure the discursive universe of academic activities. This paper provides a mapping of the field of academic interactions based on a sample of 93 influential intellectuals active in sustainable development thinking in Latin America, from a review of more than ten thousand citations over a period of forty years (1972-2012). The software Gephi was used to draw figures that highlight these networks along three separate periods of time. A first period runs from 1970 and the start of modern environmental concerns until 1987 and the publication of the very influential Brundtland Report. A second period (1987-2002) covers the period of a flourishing institutional concept of sustainable development until the Johannesburg Conference. And the third one runs until the Rio+20 Summit in 2012. This quantitative analysis is complemented by a qualitative analysis of the works and relations of the most influential authors. The results show a gradual structuring of the discursive field on the subcontinent. We are able to trace the main relations between authors in Latin America and outside, mostly to the US and Europe. Our results also show that many academics in the sub region elaborated critical discourses that developed in synergy with various social movements that strive for justice and socio-environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The words "green ICTs" (information and communication technologies), "green IT" or "eco-ICTs" have spread in recent years either asserting the ecological potential of digital technologies or, on the contrary, underlining the progress needed in this field. Our paper raises the issue of ICT production and use, showing how they help to steer human societies towards more ecological ways, or on the other hand how they generate pollutions and "rebound effects", which might more than cancel expected benefits. What stakes are currently involved in these terms? By crossing the contributions of several disciplines, the paper highlights a trend shared by many stakeholders who believe that the problem can be solved through technical advances and thus can be dropped out of their agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ANR Agrobiosphère program (2011-2013) aimed to support and fund research projects addressing the issue of transition towards sustainable production systems. It followed in the steps of the ADD (2005-2006) and Systerra (2008-2010) programs and of Adage, a prospective workshop on the impacts of climate change and new adaptation strategies. Priority was given to issues related to the long-term evolutionary trajectories of systems, to the design of agro-ecological innovations at the territorial and sector levels, also including the notions of transition, sustainability and resilience in situations of change. This paper gives the main points of a final review conference organized in November 2016, at which the results generated by the projects were discussed within five sessions: adaptation to global changes; biogeochemical cycles; functional biodiversity; territorial modeling and support to actors; relations between natural environments and economic systems. We show that the program succeeded in building bridges between different scientific communities in an innovative way. It facilitated the development of new forms of interdisciplinarity and inter-institutional collaboration, leading to a significant increase in the contribution of scientific teams in ecology and social sciences to the project, and thus opening a space in agronomic research for the various dimensions of sustainable development. The program has proved crucial in stabilizing the concept of agroecology, which has now became a very concrete component of French public policy. The lessons learnt from Agrobiosphère are a strong argument for thematic programs to support targeted research on emergent issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an example of the advantages of using mathematical viability theory concepts and tools to study sustainable development issues. Instead of seeking optimal solutions according to a predefined value function, viability theory follows a inverse approach and does not postulate any a priori behaviours. Its methods and tools concern the set of all evolutions from a given situation that remain within a given set of constraints. An evolution is called viable (sustainable) if constraints are permanently satisfied. These constraints may be physical and as such imperative, or normative and consequently possibly modifiable. The aim of the paper is to show that the viability approach does not only encompass constraint satisfaction but also helps solve intertemporal optimisation problems. By applying a macroeconomic model generally used as a benchmark model to study theoretical issues of sustainable development we propose a new approach to assessing intergenerational equity. We describe two viability approaches to tackle the intergenerational equity issue: the first, proposed earlier by previous authors, concerns a minimal set of guaranteed rights for all generations; the second aims to minimize inequalities between generations while respecting resources and production constraints. Numerical computations have been performed to graphically display the solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, the French government organized a series of meetings dealing with environment and sustainable development problematics under the title ⪡ Grenelle de l'Environnement ⪢. The conclusions of these meetings were introduced in a new law published in August 2009 (Law N° 2009-967) known as "Grenelle 1". Article 1 requires that the State designs a so-called Sustainable Development National Strategy (SDNS) structured around 9 targets. Target 1 consists in fighting against climate change. The SDNS is used as a basis for the involvement of public and private agencies in this perspective. The struggle against climate change and implementation of sustainable development principles within the agency framework raises a number of practical questions: how are adaptive methods and tools to be developed to help the agency reach a new balance given the environmental, economic and social risks induced by these broad targets? Are there any standards of reference and if not can an innovative approach be developed to support decision-making in situations of uncertainty? How can a management dashboard be developed for a proportional allocation of resources adapted to the various stakeholders and decision levels within the agency? How does one compare actions that can have different impacts in different sub-systems and with different time frameworks? Following a brief historical review of the origin of the challenges of sustainable development and climate change in the introduction part of the paper, we discuss the methodological approach selected and the investigator's intervention program in the first part of the paper. In the second part, we address practical issues for an agency facing the challenges of sustainable development and climate change. To this end we relate the experience of designing a sustainable development framework within a public agency using an organizational approach and a multiple criteria decision aid methodology. Finally, we discuss the decision-makers' choices and the lessons learned by implementing an innovative approach which we set up to face these new challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper asserts that sustainable development is not a univocal question whose inherent truth may be clearly stated. In historical terms, sustainable development is originally a societal project aiming at a better common life on Earth, a kind of environmental and social-democratic ideal. This project, however, must unavoidably face economic and political logics that often run against it. The paper then claims that 'sustainable development' as an expression has become omnipresent in the media, an infinitely flexible mantra liable to endless adaptations and transformations. In the following section, the paper postulates that sustainable development is not solely an ecological-social-democratic project nor a norm of 'correct speak' in the public sphere, but that it is also a set of more or less articulated institutions and practices that have a fallout on social legitimacies. Finally the paper states that for many, sustainable development is also a hit target, a way of conceiving the world that, if it cannot be combated head on because of its attractive and affective aura, must at all costs be undermined from the inside and pushed out of the way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some postulates about sustainable development indicators: the example of aquaculture. Firstly, the authors illustrate the abundance of references and initiatives enabling to implement sustainable development in aquaculture. They develop a chart to assess such initiatives with regards to the main features of sustainable development. Secondly, this paper outlines the co-construction approach of principles, criteria and indicators, selected in reference to the assumption that implementing sustainable development requires a stakeholder commitment and a collective learning process. The construction of indicators is based on criteria which refer to principles accounting for local issues and stakeholder representations of sustainable development. Finally, the third part of the paper provides a reflexive analysis of the protocol which is proposed so as to develop a more general inventory of conditions and procedures for the appropriation of sustainable development. Focusing on these conditions and procedures outlines the need for collective learning regarding the appropriation of a new value system. They also emphasize on the organizational and institutional conditions of this learning process; this implies defining a co-construction system and taking into account intermediate elements. Consequently, the proposed approach underlines the multiplicity of indicator functions. As a result, criteria and indicators are "facilitating" and "mediating" tools for stakeholders, employed in the deconstruction/construction process for implementing sustainable development. Thus the authors agree with the recent observations stemming from the evaluation of sustainable development indicators' construction approaches. These approaches demonstrate the significance of their supporting role in the consultation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how the concept of sustainable development interacts with scientific disciplines. First it confronts the characteristics of academic research dealing with sustainable development to the criteria formulated by T. Kuhn for disciplines, paradigms and scientific revolutions. In this framework, sustainable development does not appear as an overarching paradigm. It is interpreted differently within several disciplines, and can modify their subjects and methods of research. In the second part of the paper, more recent theory about scientific disciplines is introduced, underlining the importance of interactions with spheres external to scientific communities. The paper suggests that a major feature of sustainable development research - that has more to deal with methods than with the subjects studied - would be to deliberately assume the interactions of science, society and policy, and to deal with their consequences. We conclude with some implications of these analyses for teaching sustainable development in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the emergence of the "sustainable city" concept, urban issues are assuming increasing importance in research and debates relating to the environment. In order to contribute to reflection on achievements and interdisciplinary research perspectives, this paper proposes a retrospective and prospective account of city and urban analyses conducted in the journal Natures Sciences Sociétés. Based on the corpus of writings published in the journal since its inception, the author develops a critical analysis around five themes: urban nuisances and the quality of the urban living environment; local pollution and heritage management of urban living environment; urban atmospheric pollution and human health; urban ecology and nature in the city; from urban ecology to the sustainable city. The paper then shows the contribution made by these articles and considerations in the development of an interdisciplinary perspective to investigate the relationship that people have with nature. This analysis highlights the heuristic potential offered by the broadening of problematics and the decompartmentalization of approaches as well as the conceptual, methodological, and epistemological difficulties and stumbling blocks of interdisciplinary approaches that link natural sciences and social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking Sartre's philosophy as a starting point, our paper is deliberately both theoretical and action oriented. It aims to promote a way to develop the adequate scientific practices which the sustainable development utopia requires. To this end, it is written as a manifesto designed to stimulate debates and controversies. Following a critical review of all that is being said and done in the name of sustainable development in the political sphere as well as in the relationships social sciences entertain with the political sphere, this paper is a call to consider rigorously the difficulties and even the impossibilities of moving "from the utopia to the concepts". Introducing and articulating the almost contradictory dimensions of sustainability in real urban territories demands that a relevant method be developed to investigate this complex object. We propose the concept of "socially sustainable milieu" to try and reach this objective which requires the interdisciplinary linking of physical and social sciences. GIS and modelling need to be associated with anthropological methods. Most of all, the paper underscores the need to set "inhabitants" at the heart of the scientific project, thus reversing the usual focus and starting with an investigation of the way each individual reconciles the "three pillars" of sustainable development and builds his/her relationship with sustainable urban milieus. This may help rise above the still top-down views of governance, thus enabling scientists to contribute to developing the political sustainable utopia in real sites and situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Amazonian context, some authors analyze the evolution of the agricultural frontier as a pre-determinated dynamic: the stabilization of the frontier, which has been colonized by family farmers, would repeat the Brazilian model of land tenure, with the domination of big properties and the marginalization of family farming. This paper is based on the hypothesis that the stabilization of the frontier depends on sedentarization strategies of the farmers: alongside public politics and the economic context, examining migration choices of family farmers is essential to understand the type of frontier stabilization occurring. Those strategies can not be seen as an economically rationalistic behaviour, but depends on the reproduction logics of the families. This paper focuses on the migrations of the farmers’ sons in the Transamazonian frontier in order to reveal the strategies of their families’ mobility, and their complex relations with the space and the society. Concluding with a statistical analysis showing that there is no factor explaining the whole migrations of the sons, I present a qualitative analysis in order to establish a typology of farmer families according to their mobility practices; and I attempt to map this typology to show its importance in different localities over 30 years. Finally, I point out that the stabilization of the frontier is closely linked with the families’ strategies, and that the debate on sedentarization requires a more complex model of the relations between social organization and land. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Numerous research and development projects have been launched since the seventies in the French overseas territories. Their aim was to foster new activities in agriculture based on local productions for local markets, notably in the French West Indies (FWI). In this paper we analyze two development projects on the rearing of giant freshwater prawn, one in the FWI and the other in French Guyana, over twenty years after their launching. The purpose of these compared studies is twofold: first to try to understand why a set of relevant technical innovations ended in failure 15 years later; second to identify recommendations in terms of methodology in order to diminish risks of mistakes or failure for future projects. To reach this goal we followed two approaches. A first analysis is based on a set of three criteria: social acceptability, legitimacy and time planning. The second analysis, justified by the subjective need for an explanatory tool, is based on the actor-network theory. The results show that beyond the levels of political support and financial investment and support the three key criteria for success are: (i) reactivity of the decision-makers, notably when markets change, (ii) quality of leadership transfer between the launching phase and the stabilized phase, and (iii) capacity of the decision-makers to take into account the concrete consequences of the various scenarios. Regarding this third criterion, our analysis suggests that the scenario of full technical success needs to be explored, notably in terms of economic sustainability. The integration of these two types of analyses into an ex-ante frame should contribute to reducing risks of failure in similar development projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on some salient issues of urban sustainable development in France with a specific accent on six urban agglomerations: Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Montpellier, Nantes and Toulouse. The reticular nature of these issues and the circuits leading to their realization are analysed with reference to the ways a multiplicity of actors conceive, plan and bring about the construction of cities, rather than through sectoral viewpoints. Thus, urban sustainable development appears within a (locally variable) set of linkages that sets these issues firmly in areas of interrelations and intersections. Based on a large body of documentation and field work (observations and interviews) this approach helps trace the complex relations between discourse and the reality of on-going dynamics, including the implementation of sustainable development urban operations such as mutations in the domain of public action as exemplified by urbanisation. These relations converge in articulating the issues, with urban sustainable development — in the diversity of its usages — becoming a "portmanteau", much like "governance". In this context, technical experts and the "city professionals" can be seen as intermediary representatives: actors/go-betweens who contribute to the development of links and modes of combining practices between usually separate worlds. On this assumption, we consider that nowadays novel professions directly linked with urban areas and environmental issues are emerging at public local level (cities, metropolitan institutions, town-planning agencies, semi-public companies, associations acting as service providers, etc.), in proportion with the development of an urban sustainable development "repertoire" in urban politics. New specific competences and scopes of activities extend and define the field of sustainable development experts. Nevertheless, these competences remain broken up between several kinds of jobs and functions (civil servants and local government officers, project leaders, urban architects, consultants, employees of associations, etc.). Indeed, the limits of this professionalization process are significant of the success of urban sustainable development itself, which can be interpreted as a malleable concept, a property considered as a central condition of its cognitive and practical diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper summarizes work carried out by the scientific committee "Society, Environment and Sustainable Development" (1999-2002), a programming instance of CNRS PEVS-2. We present its main scientific results, the structuring of scientific communities to which it contributed, and the institutional difficulties inherent in science policy dealing with the environment and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the conditions that are liable to lead to local environmental quality enhancement in areas having suffered from industrial pollution in the past. in emphasizing the central role of institutions, understood as common meanings, "proximity" can help researchers understand the mechanisms inherent in the development of collective action, beginning with converging individual interests coupled with co-ordination among various actors. In the field of environmental and territorial dynamics, these conditions are crucial in achieving certain objectives shared by various stakeholders motivated by different interests that may converge on a specific point. The specificities inherent in the management of environmental resources and the importance of land-use or resource-use conflicts are an invitation to investigate the central role of institutions in this field. In this paper we focus on institutional proximity in order to express the conditions that may lead to a collective and territorial dynamic made possible by exploitation of natural resource and seeking to achieve both industrial development and environmental quality goals. We show that these goals are not necessarily achieved through the use of market tools. The actions described here were launched a few years ago to deal with the "industrial environment" in Dunkirk and are widely based on the implementation of locally-established rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work is based on a literature review and analysis of sustainable indicator proposals for transport policies from different countries and international organizations. Its aim was to propose an approach to qualify these experiences. Indicators are drawn up in support of a particular posture, a characteristic which is relevant for our analysis. Several political postures were found to underlie the production of indicators and their uses. We highlighted three argumentative postures. An integrative posture which seeks to internalize social and environmental externalities, its aim being to optimize transport policies. A critical posture which argues for a more reasonable and less aggressive transport policy. This posture is often environmentally-based. Last, a global posture based on the sustainable development movement at national or international scales. These experiences deal with different development aspects, transport being only one of their concerns. We were able to demonstrate the analytical interest of these three postures in a study of four experiences of public debate. To conclude, our paper calls for a better definition of the governance contexts in which the sustainable transport indicators are used. The indicators proposed in the experiences studied relate to different postures within the same framework of debates and are difficult to use in describing them. Working on the governance context is essential to ensure a proper use of indicators that will enrich concertation and debates among actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to highlight the links between outdoor sports, sustainable development and the environment. The action-research work the author analyzed was designed to help local stakeholders manage their interactions and take the environment into account in developing and institutionalizing outdoor sports under a Scheme for spaces, sites and paths relative to outdoor sports. After briefly presenting the situation of outdoor sports, the article examines critically the literature on the environmental impact of these activities. It then analyzes the conditions in which a tool for environmental evaluation was evolved and the stakeholder interactions it induced. To conclude we show the difficulty that arise in establishing a process of participative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Production of academic knowledge in the past two centuries has been marked by a clear trend towards specialization. The considerable importance currently gained by environmental issues, as seen through the lense of sustainable development, has promoted significant changes in this scenario and highlighted the need for interdisciplinary approaches (de-specialization). The recent creation of interdisciplinary master's and doctoral training programs in Brazil faces a range of obstacles related to the general crisis prevailing in University. Using examples taken from Brazilian graduate programs, our paper outlines and analyzes critically the programs focused on environmental issues nationwide and shows the significant limitations and challenges incurred in building this new field of knowledge. Despite a growing trend towards "environmentalization" of some disciplines, the issue at stake is to interdisciplinarize the focus on sustainable development. The consolidated programs are presented according to the specific institutional arrangements adopted by them. They clearly reflect a need to act creatively in order to break through the impenetrable structure of disciplinary departments. To conlcude, the idea of building a network structure within University is argued as a possible alternative, a solution that does not deny the role of traditional departments, but opens spaces for their interaction with interdisciplinary units and programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]