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External effects and social benefits of road freight transports: a few remarks on the IRU-sponsored study. – The study conducted by a European team of researchers on behalf of the International Road Union (IRU) under the direction of Professor G Aberlé prompts a number of reservations, in particular as concerns the evaluation of the social benefits of long-distance road freight transport. The method used to arrive at this evaluation is that of “monetary economies”. This measures the additional costs and losses in social usefulness that would result from a 100% or 30% transfer of long-distance road traffic to rail.Second thoughts on this evaluation give reason to doubt the assumptions on which it is based. The transfer scenarios are unrealistic. The definition of long distance is an inappropriate one. The assumption that prices correctly reflect costs is dubious. And, more generally, the assumption that “other things remain equal” implies the further assumptions that the road and rail transport production functions themselves would remain unaffected by the transfer ; that costs are independent of traffic level ; that the production and distribution system (organization in space, logistic chain management) would remain unchanged, and so on. Moreover, the analytical balance computed in the report seems to be of little significance compared with the economic calculations, and the evaluation makes no claim to any scientific standing as regards optimization theories.----------------------------------------------With the author and the publisher of the copyright agreement. The present version in PDF is under the copyright of EDITECOM (http://www.editecom.com/) - 1994., La publication par l'IRU de l'étude intitulée « les avantages sociaux du transport routier de marchandises à longue distance », réalisée sous la direction du professeur G. Aberlé, constitue un évènement important, puisque ce travail apporte une contribution à plusieurs débats : le débat théorique sur la signification et l'analyse des effets du transport routier de marchandises; le débat méthodologique sur la manière de les mesurer; le débat politique enfin sur la répartition modale entre le rail et la route.Notre ambition est d'apporter aussi, mais plus modestement, une contribution à ces débats. Plus précisément, nous nous intéresserons aux deux premiers débats, et à eux seulement, évoqués ci-dessus. Il ne nous paraît en effet pas opportun de poser les problèmes de fond dus à l'existence d'effets externes dans le domaine des transports en termes de concurrence rail-route, alors qu'un accord très général semble prévaloir pour considérer enfin la nécessité de raisonner sur le système global de transport, dans une perspective de complémentarité entre les modes, tant en voyageurs qu'en marchandises.

The aim of this paper is to show how the Catalan fishery mobilizes and controls its workforce. We stress the mechanisms which are used to reduce the negative effects that the special features of fishing work impose on capitalist processes. We also wish to show how the revival and transformation of the "fishing guilds" and the "catch sharing" system have proved historically and practically to be the best mechanisms for bringing about the slow transformation of the fisheries sector in Catalonia. (Résumé d'auteur)

La pêche artisanale contribue pour la moitié des prises de poissons au Brésil. Cependant, en dépit de son importance, elle n'a pas bénéficié des mêmes crédits et services que ceux accordés à la pêche industrielle par le Programme de Développement de la Pêche lancé en 1967. Les bateaux financés par la pêche capitaliste moderne ont rapidement épuisé les stocks de poissons et crevettes destinés à l'exportation et ont envahi les espaces côtiers traditionnellement utilisés par les communautés de pêcheurs artisanaux, en créant de graves conflits. En même temps, ces communautés souffrent des impacts de la pollution produite par une urbanisation chaotique et par l'implantation de centres industriels importants dans des estuaires et lagune côtières. Cette étude analyse les rapports entre la pêche industrielle et artisanale au Brésil, en mettant en évidence les conflits et les articulations entre ces deux formes d'organisation de la production. Elle fait aussi un bilan préliminaire des études sur la pêche artisanale au Brésil. (Résumé d'auteur)

The coastal fishermen of St-Pierre have used the same fishing equipment for almost a century (with the exception of boat engines). There are many reasons for the decline in coastal cod fishing - natural, economic and cultural. During the last twenty years cod have almost disappeared from the islands; the various fishing companies (established since 1950) are not interested in the production of small-scale fisheries, nor in the future of coastal fishermen. The politicians and managers, however, continue to predict a prosperous future for the coastal fishing industry. Subsidies are handed out to the fishermen of St-Pierre to persuade them to try long-liners, dredger-boats, etc., but there are many examples of these attempts ending in failure. This destroys important components of St-Pierre's maritime culture. (Résumé d'auteur)

The decline of the semi-industrial purse seine fishery, in contrast to the growth of the small-scale fishery, has led the state authorities and professionals to call upon research to provide the objective reasons for the decline. After an assessment of the fishery, of the legal framework, and the economic aspects, the different levels of competition between the small-scale and semi-industrial fisheries were identified and the potential for cooperation between the two activities were analysed. (Résumé d'auteur)

The study of the fishing industry has for many years been based on an implicit or explicit preconception, which consisted in thinking of fishing as being the central and most important activity, determining all over activities coming before or after. With the use of several examples, the author shows that this interpretation is incorrect. Small-scale fishing, as with all socio-economic activities, forms part of a complex series of interrelationships (or both spatial and temporal combinations). Its management cannot be reduced simply to management of fish stocks. An overall multidisciplinary approach to the fishery system, taken at different scales, is therefore needed. (Résumé d'auteur)

In the Ebrié lagoon (Côte d'Ivoire), the violent conflicts opposing "individuals" and "collective" artisanal fishermen in 1982 originated in the collapse of Bonga catches and led to the total ban of purse seines for reasons of overfishing. The results of bio-ecological research, mainly in the fields of reproductive biology and distribution of the species in the lagoon, did not agree with the hypothesis of overfishing, particularly because of the great abundance of Etmalosa in several unexploited sectors of the lagoon. Finally, sociologist emphasized the long-lasting conflict between "individual" autochtonous fishermen and "collective" fishermen (most of them being "foreigners"). The coming together of several scientific disciplines provided a better understanding of the 1982 conflict, the origin of which seems to be more of a sociological nature rather than a biological one. A global and multidisciplinary approach seems to be the only way to comprehend the complexity of artisanal fisheries systems. (Résumé d'auteur)

The history of public intervention in the marine fisheries sector in Senegal illustrates the existence of perverse effects, leading especially to a reinforcement of small-scale fisheries while the local industrial fishhery encounters great difficulties in modernising and developing, despite the fact that it receives most public assistance. We call this the "informal effect" in the fishery management system. The difference between the initial development plan and the observed results can be explained by the fact that certain data (concerning especially small-scale fisheries) are more difficult to collect because the permitted analytical categories are not adapted to reality. A simple geometrical interpretation of the problem, base on a statistical modelling concept, is proposed. (Résumé d'auteur)

Seventy percent of the fish consumed in Guinea is produced by the local small-scale fisheries and more than 60% of the artisanal fishery landings are located in the capital. The Conakry Peninsula has 24 landing sites; this means that workers involved in "informal activities" related to small-scale fisheries are scattered throughout the city. This explains why multidisciplinary studies concerning the social and economic organization of these activities, developed in the Centre de Recherche Halieutique de Boussoura (Conakry), are based on broader research topics including the dynamics of urban settlement and of urban property ownership. (Résumé d'auteur)

International audience; A knowledge of Kanake social organization (the indigenouspopulation ofNew Caledonia) and the role that jïshing clans hold within it, is an indispensable precondition for understanding the successes andfailures of marine development projects, a question of crucial importance for New Caledonia. The magical foundations of technical activities such asfishing laws, hierarchies between clans, the overall scheduling of catches and the distribution of foodstuffs, even today remain the unavoidable framework of any rejlection on Kanak Society, and even more so of any economic intervention from the outside. This article also enables us to see, on the basis of concrete examples, what are the constraints and opportunities of ethnological research in the face of different environmental development policies produced by the political powers. Aucun développement économique ne sera possible sans la prise en compte des données culturelles, et le peuple kanak est seul à pouvoir définir et mettre en oeuvre le développement spécifique de son pays ... toute entreprise de << développement << qui ne partirait pas de la réalité kanak est vouée à l'&hm et même au sous-développement (WAMYTAN, 1985 : 7).