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Alors que les sols font progressivement l’objet d’une mise a l’agenda des politiques environnementales, les sciences du sol sont amenees a se renouveler. La cartographie des sols connait une transformation importante avec l’emergence de la cartographie numerique, permise par l’essor des systemes d’information, de la modelisation et de la teledetection. Cet article retrace l’histoire de l’organisme national francais de cartographie des sols depuis les annees 60 pour analyser les transformations professionnelles et epistemiques associees a cette evolution. Il rend compte de l’emergence de la pedologie en lien avec la cartographie des sols, des changements que le domaine connait avec l’introduction des technologies de l’information et des tensions que cela suscite entre les cartographes « conventionnels » issus de la pedologie et les cartographes « numeriques » tournes vers la modelisation. La transformation des cartes des sols favorise une diversification des communautes engagees dans leur production et leur utilisation mais implique aussi, paradoxalement, une reduction de la diversite des facons de connaitre et de se lier aux sols.

International audience; While categorized as Small Island Developing States, South Pacific Island nations are the custodians of major ocean areas containing marine resources of high commercial and environmental significance. Yet, these resources are threatened by climate change, overfishing, Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, as well as habitat destruction. The study, carried out in the early stage of the interdisciplinary research project SOCPacific (https://socpacific.net), aims to: a) identify the main policies on which fisheries management is currently based in the South Pacific, particularly in Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu; b) investigate the evolution over time of key issues covered in these policies and related to coastal and/or offshore fisheries sectors; c) trace disconnections on the matter between legally binding instruments and non-binding strategies. A list of more than 200 documents relevant to regional fisheries management was gathered and separated into legally binding instruments and non-binding strategies. Legal instruments focused more on offshore issues (tuna fisheries and IUU fishing) and increasingly covered IUU fishing issues, confirming that tuna fisheries have an established hard policy arena. In strategies pertaining to coastal fisheries, community involvement appears as a key topic and a clear overall trend towards increasingly addressing climate change was spotlighted. Sustainability, community involvement, climate change, and food security issues are more covered in strategies than in legal instruments. Topics mostly addressed in relation to coastal areas are not substantially covered in legal instruments, suggesting that establishing binding measures might not be deemed as beneficial as strategies in coastal fields.

The Paris Agreement reached at the COP 21 signals the new centrality of carbon sinks, including soils, as a key means of enabling a net zero carbon global balance through the development of ‘negative emission technologies’. This article focuses on the 4 per 1000 Initiative, which the French government launched to foster soil carbon sequestration with an international scope. We present and discuss the multidisciplinary design of our research, the methodological tensions that it entailed and the assets that it eventually represented for a better consideration of soil agency and vulnerability. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative investigation, we discuss soil carbon sequestration promises in light of the broader politics of soil knowledge. We argue that the 4 per 1000 promise may have failed to give adequate attention to soil’s complex agency (e.g. its capacity to both release and sequester carbon and other greenhouse gases) and soil’s vulnerability (e.g. to urbanisation and intensive agriculture, which have long been causing soil degradation, including carbon loss). Committing to a richer conception of soil agency and soil fragility is crucial to enact the social and environmental conditions for fostering efficient and sustainable technological and political change in relation to climate change.

International audience; The Paris Agreement reached at the COP 21 signals the new centrality of carbon sinks, including soils, as a key means of enabling a net zero carbon global balance through the development of ‘negative emission technologies’. This article focuses on the 4 per 1000 Initiative, which the French government launched to foster soil carbon sequestration with an international scope. We present and discuss the multidisciplinary design of our research, the methodological tensions that it entailed and the assets that it eventually represented for a better consideration of soil agency and vulnerability. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative investigation, we discuss soil carbon sequestration promises in light of the broader politics of soil knowledge. We argue that the 4 per 1000 promise may have failed to give adequate attention to soil’s complex agency (e.g. its capacity to both release and sequester carbon and other greenhouse gases) and soil’s vulnerability (e.g. to urbanisation and intensive agriculture, which have long been causing soil degradation, including carbon loss). Committing to a richer conception of soil agency and soil fragility is crucial to enact the social and environmental conditions for fostering efficient and sustainable technological and political change in relation to climate change.

Si les sols sont indispensables à l’activité humaine et au bon fonctionnement des écosystèmes, ils ne font pourtant l’objet d’aucune mesure de conservation contraignante qui leur soit dédiée. Nous défendons que les difficultés à mettre en place des mesures de conservation du sol ne renvoient pas simplement à l’invisibilité propre au monde souterrain et aux dangers qui le menacent : comprendre ces difficultés demande de retracer la trajectoire de mise à l’agenda du sol comme enjeu environnemental et les répertoires particuliers dans lesquelles elle s’exprime. En déployant une approche pluridisciplinaire alliant sciences sociales et sciences du sol, nous avons cherché à identifier et à caractériser les logiques de requalification environnementale du sol à l’oeuvre depuis le milieu des années 2000. Nous avons notamment cherché à comprendre dans quelle mesure ces logiques de requalification du sol comme enjeu de conservation se démarquaient de l’appréhension agricole dominante qui envisage le sol en termes de support de fertilité et de production agronomique. Sur la base d’une enquête sociologique qualitative approfondie menée en France, incluant exploitation documentaire et entretiens, nous caractérisons deux logiques de requalification environnementale du sol, en termes d’une part de conservation des sols et de leur biodiversité menacés par des processus de dégradation, et en termes d’autre part de conservation et de sécurisation des fonctions et services rendus par les sols. Nous discutons enfin les différences et les relations entre ces deux logiques du point de vue de la manière dont elles interpellent, bousculent, ou au contraire font alliance avec les enjeux et les intérêts agricoles., While soil is crucial to human activity and ecosystem functioning, there is no policy specifically focused on soil conservation. We argue that the difficulties to implement soil conservation policies are not merely due to the invisibility of the underground world and the threats on its life and functioning. Instead, we need to unpack how soil has been set onto political agenda as an environmental issue, and to analyze the specific repertoires and language in which soil conservation is articulated. Drawing on a multidisciplinary approach including social sciences and soil sciences, we accounted for the logics of requalification of soil as environmental issue at play since the mid 2000s and for their relationships with the dominant agricultural qualification of soil as a material substrate for fertilization and agronomic productivity. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative investigation in France, including documentary exploitation and interviews, we identified two distinct logics of environmental requalification of soil, respectively in terms of endangered biodiversity and threatened soils in need of conserving, and in terms of soil functions and soil ecosystem services in need of conserving and securing. We finally discuss how those logics tend to unsettle agricultural logics and power relations or to comply with them.