La contextualisation des recherches en environnement : une approche multiscalaire et multi-acteurs en Cévennes

The contextualisation of research on the environment: a multi-scales and multi-actor approach in the Cévennes

¹ Sciences des organisations, INRA, UMR1248 AGIR, 31326 Castanet-Tolosan cedex, France
² Écologue, INRA, Unité d’écodéveloppement, Site Agroparc, 84914 Avignon cedex 9, France

Résumé

Depuis une trentaine d’années, plusieurs auteurs ont souligné une tendance de la recherche à être conduite dans ses contextes d’application. Ici, nous montrons à partir d’une étude de cas – le réaménagement du massif forestier du Rouvergue (Cévennes) –, que nous avons suivie durant treize ans, comment la recherche dans le domaine de la prévention des incendies de forêt et, plus généralement, de la gestion de l’espace peut être fortement ancrée dans ses contextes d’application. Nous nous intéressons conjointement à la transformation des différents contextes dans lesquels nous avons mis en place nos dispositifs de recherche successifs et à la transformation des orientations des recherches et des domaines de connaissances concernés. Cela nous conduit à approfondir la question des modalités concrètes du dialogue transdisciplinaire à instaurer entre recherche et société et celle d’une différenciation nécessaire des contextes de ce dialogue.

Abstract

Increasingly, the context in which research is conducted is being viewed as part of the research process itself as shown in the studies of many researchers over the past thirty years. Based on a case study in the French Cévennes in which we have been involved over some thirteen years, we illustrate how research on forest fire hazards prevention – and more generally land use management – could be contextualized at both the local and policy making levels. Central to the study was the design of a new landscape management project for a 4 500 ha area recently ravaged by fire. The aim was to promote complementarities between forestry and livestock farming in order to create a landscape environment less sensitive to fire hazards. During the different project stages between 1986 and 2002 we participated in different working groups composed of locally involved stakeholders. These successive stages centered on different topics and working practices according to the group composition and the goals set by the participants. Our work highlighted the changes that occurred during this quite long period regarding the perception of issues, problems and questions identified by the stakeholders as well as their position regarding cooperation with researchers in a transdisciplinary process.

Our work focused on the interactions between the research dynamics and the changes that occurred in the different situations in which the institutional arrangements we introduced operated. In such situations where knowledge production and action are closely linked, cross-learning processes occur in all the participants including the researchers, causing relationships as well as the common topics and goals to evolve on a transdisciplinary base. More difficult is to identify how much the organizations involved could learn and capitalize from such processes involving their own agents even though this institutional level is mainly where policy making regarding such complex issues could become less sectoral and more systems-thinking and practicing in order to evolve adaptive capacities for change.