Lecturer at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences and member of the International Center for Research on Environment and Development (Cired), Antonin Pottier, whose research focuses on the role of economic sciences in the ecological transition, directed Reconciling economy and ecology (Presses des Ponts, 354 p., 45 euros), which brings together founding texts of Cired.
How was economic thinking on the environment immediately linked to that of development?
At the beginning of the 1970s, fear was expressed that environmental protection, driven by rich countries, could be to the detriment of the development of poor countries. Ignacy Sachs [1927-2023] and the CIRED economists then propose to rethink the objectives of growth starting from the idea that it must be put at the service of an equalization of conditions between nations. This is ecodevelopment, development in harmony with the environment. This is distinguished from “zero growth”, because we do not renounce any form of growth. It is also distinguished from “sustainable development”, which does not call into question international inequalities.
How to concretely implement this ecodevelopment?
Through planning, but not just any planning. Through his experience in Poland, India, Brazil and France, Sachs was able to measure the limits of planning tools as they had been designed in the North and the South, in the East and in the ‘West: sometimes they seek to predict what will need to be produced based on false figures, sometimes they lead to the production of things that we do not need. Introducing the environment at the heart of planning issues then appears to him to be a way of overcoming these recurring difficulties. This is linked to the very material nature of environmental issues. By taking into account pollution, living environments, and aiming for better management of resources, it becomes possible to no longer just ask: “How to produce?” ”, but: “Why produce it? » And, finally, to ask yourself: “What do we need? »
Is this more democratic planning?
Sachs speaks more precisely of “endogenous development”. This is a planning in which more consultations are introduced in the territories in order to involve local populations in the decision.
But this is only possible if we free ourselves from purely monetary indicators. These obscure the entire hidden economy, this “outside the market” which escapes the statistical apparatus, but also dematerialize economic thinking. Trying to predict the income we will have in twenty or thirty years does not say much about the society we want to build. Sachs, who was influenced by the writings of Fernand Braudel and Michel de Certeau, suggests that we take into account, in projections, the uses of time which structure everyday life. Reasoning in terms of social time allows us to rematerialize economic forecasts: how much time for production, for rest, for leisure, but also what living environment, for what uses and according to what sharing.
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