Issue |
Nat. Sci. Soc.
Volume 29, Number 4, Octobre/Décembre 2021
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 469 - 478 | |
Section | Regards – Focus | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/nss/2022002 | |
Published online | 28 February 2022 |
Le continent oublié. Lumières et zones d’ombre des recherches sur la dissémination des plastiques
The forgotten continent. Light and shadows of research on the dispersal of plastics
1
Sociologie, Université de Picardie Jules-Verne, UR Habiter le monde, Amiens, France
2
Sciences de la Terre, Université Paris-Est Créteil, UR LEESU, Créteil, France
3
Chimie, Université Gustave-Eiffel, UR LEE, Nantes, France
4
Sciences de l’environnement, École des Ponts ParisTech, UR LEESU, Champs-sur-Marne, France
* Auteur correspondant : bruno.tassin@enpc.fr
Pourquoi le nombre de publications scientifiques sur les plastiques a-t-il explosé sur les 7-8 dernières années ? Pourquoi le nombre d’équipes à travers le monde investies dans la recherche sur les plastiques a-t-il crû également de manière exponentielle ? Pourquoi une majorité de travaux est-elle issue du monde des sciences de la nature et se focalise-t-elle sur le compartiment océanique et non sur le compartiment continental où pourtant ils sont majoritairement produits ? Pourquoi de plus en plus de travaux s’intéressent-ils aux micro- puis nanoplastiques, alors qu’en masse les rejets sont majoritairement de grande taille ? Pourquoi, dans ce qui est devenu une grande question de société, les sciences humaines et sociales n’ont-elles qu’une implication très marginale ? Voilà les principales questions auxquelles ce regard croisé s’efforce de proposer des éléments de réponses et de réflexion, au travers de l’expérience d’une équipe interdisciplinaire, investie dans la recherche sur les plastiques depuis presque 10 ans.
Abstract
In about ten years, global contamination by plastics has become a worldwide issue involving many categories of stakeholders and particularly the scientific community. Over this period, the number and production of these scientific teams has grown exponentially, giving scientific and media notoriety to many researchers. This surprising growth raises, however, many questions for number of actors involved in this research. In this article, a multidisciplinary group of researchers from the human and social sciences (socio-anthropology) and the natural sciences (chemistry, Earth sciences, environmental sciences) offers its analysis of this phenomenon through its experience. The article successively explores the reasons why a) most of the work ever done is focusing on the ocean environment, while the contamination is mainly land-based, b) work is increasingly focusing on micro- and nano-plastics, while the masses discharged are mostly in the form of macro-litter, c) there is a need to highlight ecotoxicological or toxicological hazards as though the global contamination by artificial compounds was not in itself a major issue, and last d) the NGOs contribute so much in research on plastics. It also points out the major methodological difficulties when studying plastic leakage into the environment from their sources to pathways and sinks. The almost absence of the human sciences from this debate is discussed. The article concludes on the need for a much more systemic approach to better organize plastics research.
Mots clés : environnement / risques / développement durable / épistémologie / déchets plastiques / interdisciplinarité
Key words: environment / hazard / sustainable development / epistemology / plastic litter / interdisciplinarity
© D. Blot et al., Hosted by EDP Sciences, 2022
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, except for commercial purposes, provided the original work is properly cited.
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