1970, the invention of the environment?

 Editorial

François Valérian

 
Foreword: “Environmentalization” and its semantic shifts in France during the 20th century

Florian Charvolin

What happened between the reappearance of “environmentalization” enclosed in quote marks and its institutional recognition in 1971, when the Ministry of the Protection of Nature and the Environment was set up in France? A matter neither purely of semantics nor just of ontology, this deciphering of the “environmentalization” process focuses on semantic shifts in the changing uses of the word so as to interpret transformations of the thing itself: the four periods of environmental issues during the 20th century, the road taken by this concept and the extreme mobility of the word itself.

From an interministerial assignment to a Ministry of the Environment

Serge Antoine

The concept of “environment” germinated in several ministries at the same time. This might, it seems, have happened first in America. Whatever the case might have been, the concept in France did not come from America. It was a germination because a social phenomenon came into being.

 A ministry’s birth

Robert Poujade

Born out of political decisions at a time when a still rural France was trying to pursue economic growth without sacrificing its quality of life, the new Ministry of the Environment prepared the grounds that still underlie ecology here. A firm but pragmatic dialog with manufacturers, an undemagogic synergy with nongovernmental organizations, the requirements of science, operational actions, the economy and environment, international cooperation… all this has stood the test of time.

Ecology is the planet, and the planet is us

Brice Lalonde

In 1969, the Apollo mission signaled an event as significant as Christopher Colombus discovering the New World: the first human being walked on the moon. Of even more importance were the pictures of the Earth taken from outer space. For the first time, mankind saw the Earth from a position beyond it. Ecology came into being. We are on a spaceship. The second  launching of ecology occurred when President Pompidou explained that Paris had to be adapted to the automobile. This idea that public authorities were going to force us off the streets led the author to rebel and become an activist.

 
The early days of the Ministry of the Environment

Jean‑François Saglio

There is a time when everything is to be done and when we try to intervene everywhere: water, air, noise, solid wastes, the oceans, industry, local governments. The time of budget-tightening is not yet at hand, EU restrictions are weak, and France is sometimes ahead of the United States. When laws or regulations are not upheld, news is leaked to a weekly, and compliance is obtained. The administration of the French Ministry of the Environment is not well developed, but successive presidents have lent their support. In a few years, a major legal arsenal has developed, and France has launched a major clean-up of pollution. The story of the early days at the Ministry: the “joy of administering”.

 2 rue Royale, in the year of grace 1971

Dominique Moyen

At its very beginning, the French Ministry of the Environment had few means but did have, above all, the freedom to invent new administrative positions, the willingness to act and, even more, the concern for making people see and think differently. Convince public administrations, undertake an untiring dialog with manufacturers, listen to citizens when their representatives do not relay their words, experiment with a new form of direct democracy, all this with, finally, the feeling of having taken part in an adventure with the future at stake, of having discovered a different way of imagining life in society and public issues. A testimony…

 Between ecology and “ecologism”: Conservation at the Museum of Natural History during the 1950s

Florian Charvolin and Christophe Bonneuil

Till the 1970s, “ecology”, referred to both a science of nature and a social commitment. As of the 1950s, the Museum of Natural History in Paris  contributed to the political and social trend that led to the emergence of this single word with two referents. This trend started following World War II, when the infatuation with colonial explorations made way for a concern with “protecting nature” — the “white man’s new civilizing mission”. The creation of the Museum with a chair of “general ecology and the protection of nature” expressed a concern for conservation and provided a grounds where a new field of science could thrive. The genealogy of an “ecologism” stripped of “ecology” that prevailed in 1970 has a much older and more common lineage.

From the hobby of fishing to the condemnation of pollution: Formulating a demand (1958‑1978)

Christelle Gramaglia

Since the early 20th century, anglers’ newsletters expressed concern about the quality of watercourses in France. The Association Nationale de Protection des Eaux and Rivieres underwent a noteworthy change as of the 1960s. A network of upstanding local citizens who were fond of fishing for salmon and trout slowly turned into an association of an environmentalist sort that regularly addressed public authorities and had recourse to the courts. These fishermen were pioneers of environmentalism, but their actions changed as more global demands were formulated.

 From the Feyzin catastrophe to the creation of the CFDE

Brigitte Wolpin

Thirty years ago in France, the large-scale accident at the Feyzin petroleum refinery south of Lyon spurred a reorganization of the services for inspecting classified installations and, later, once the CFDN (now the CFDE) was set up, to training all parties, public and private, who are involved in managing industrial risks and nuisances. As regulations have been repeatedly modified, the inspectors and operators of classified installations have managed to develop a new sort of relationship with an emphasis on cooperation with each other and on accountancy to the public. The next challenge will be to bring citizens into environmental decision-making — we predict that it will not take thirty years to do so.

 The part of French economics in inventing the environment and sustainable development

Franck‑Dominique Vivien

From 1957 to 1977, environmental questions destabilized economic theory. The bounds of economics have been redrawn; and new areas of (still active) investigation, opened. These twenty years were a key period for environmental issues and questions about the grounds for a science of the environment. The question of sustainable development, soon raised by French economists, spurred discussions about the need to reformulate the relations between economy, society and biosphere.

Subsidiarity: upwards or downwards? The origin of French water agencies and their place during a period of regionalization

Bernard Barraqué

Water agencies were created at the time of DATAR for the development of regional planning and the management of big projects during de Gaulle’s presidency — at a time when the Gaullist movement was caught up in the thick of local politics. Given their position between modernization and regional identities, these agencies were clearly evidence of the increasing institutionalization of collective actions. Though often criticized for their lack of efficiency, they never had the assignment of replacing traditional government regulations with an economic sort of regulation. They were intended to facilitate compliance with new environmental standards. In a modern, global world, does the legitimacy of public interventions not depend on their effectiveness? Should regions and river valley authorities not play a larger part? Is it a good idea to “recentralize” water policy, as a recent law tends to do. Or on the contrary, should more place be made for participatory democracy?

 
What lessons can Americans draw from the history of the French environmentalist movement?

Michael Bess

Since the 1960s, strong concern for the environment has been expressed in most industrialized lands. Beyond the transnational characteristics of these preoccupations, the movements that bore them and the institutional responses to them, each country seems to have followed its own pathway toward giving more consideration to the environment in public decision-making. France stands out from the United States owing to its relation with nature. In France, “nature” hardly ever refers to a nearly primeval wilderness untouched by mankind. Instead, it refers to the wedding of nature to humanity; and the French environmentalist movement has sought to preserve, or re-establish, this harmony. As a consequence, defending environmental issues can be compatible with technological, economic or social progress. Radical North American environmentalists have a few lessons to learn…

 
Miscellany

The inspectors of classified installations, a history (1810‑2006)

Laure Bonnaud

Police chiefs, surveyors, doctors, work inspectors, mining engineers… the forebears of the inspectors of classified installations are many in number. All of them shared a common point: the duties of inspection were performed along with other assignments. In a complicated balancing act between legal qualifications and technical expertise, the French Ministry of the Environment wanted to form a specialized occupational group of inspectors.