French Overseas Territories at the Ecological Crossroads

Pioneering Territories?

by Yann Bérard (writer), Soraya Boudia (preface)
Collection: Indisciplines
may 2025
160 x 240 format 210 pages In stock
28,00 €
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Summary

In recent years, the French Republic has endeavored to link the fate of its overseas territories to that of ecological concerns. Whether in biodiversity protection, risk management, the circular economy, or energy autonomy, this call for exemplary conduct often relies on the metaphor of the “laboratory,” a fitting image in the search for remedies to the many challenges facing these territories—unemployment, violence, high cost of living, and more.

This book offers a perspective on the situation in the Atlantic Overseas Territories, through an exploration of the main areas of public action addressing environmental issues in the French Antilles and French Guiana. At a time of major societal transitions, the framing of these former departmentalized colonies as “sustainable development laboratories” reveals an experimental vision historically tied to these regions. Calling on them to set an example in environmental matters—after having been successively subjected to the brutality of colonial extractivism and shaped by the ideology of modernizing progress—is however far from straightforward.

Beneath these various marks of “coloniality,” the claims of local actors and authorities emerge, in search of meaning and emancipation, which prove inseparable from the expression of a distinctive, albeit still uncertain and fragile, environmental subjectivity. By probing the current ecological crisis through the lens of “Creole laboratories,” this groundbreaking study resonates with numerous other issues (institutional, scientific, indigenous, etc.) at the heart of France’s Global South, offering new insight.This book is primarily intended for students, researchers, and academics, as well as public policy practitioners interested in global environmental change and North-South relations.

Read the preface - Soraya Boudia

Table of contents

Preface. France’s Global South as a Political Laboratory for Ecological TransitionSoraya Boudia

General Introduction – Re-enchanting the Overseas Territories with Green and Blue

The Overseas Environmental Issue
Environmental Policies Like Any Other?
Re-enchanting the Overseas Territories with Green and Blue: Challenging the Laboratory Narrative
The Atlantic Overseas Territories as Study Sites
Overseas Ecopolitics

Part 1 – Biodiversity, the Exceptional Under Influence

Chapter 1 – Trouble in Nature

In the Age of Ecological Imperialism
Another History of Departmentalization
Conclusion – A Paradoxical Need for Nature

Chapter 2 – Recovering Biodiversity

“An Exceptional Asset, International Responsibilities”
A Source of Legitimacy with Shifting Boundaries
Conclusion – Biodiversity at a Crossroads

Conclusion of Part 1 – From Uprooting to Attachment

Part 2 – Facing Risks, Resilience in Limbo

Chapter 3– Territories “Naturally” at Risk?

Between Learning, Unlearning, and Forgetting
In the Face of Climate Change
Conclusion – Less Responsible, More Vulnerable?

Chapter 4 – Ecological Health Inequalities

Health-Risk Environments
Risks on the Way to Normalizing?
Conclusion – Restoring Life Possibilities

Conclusion of Part 2 – Politics of Cascading Risks

PART 3 – Transition, the Impossible Change?

Chapter 5 – Changing the Nature of Development

The Magic Formula for Sustainable Development
Reconciling Catch-Up and Sustainable Development
Conclusion – “Modernize or Ecologize?”

Chapter 6 – The Challenge of the Energy Transition

Inventing Another System
Toward Energy Autonomy
Conclusion – An Accelerated Transition Under Constraint

Conclusion of Part 3 – Involuntary Dependencies, Chosen Dependencies

General Conclusion – At the Ecological Crossroads

Pioneering Territories?
(Post)colonial Continuities and Discontinuities
From Re-enchantment to State Contestation
“Creole Laboratories”

Bibliographic References
Documentary Sources
Main Acronyms and Abbreviations

Press

More contents

Features

Language(s): French

Publisher: Éditions Quae

Co-publisher: NSS-Dialogues

Edition: 1st edition

Collection: Indisciplines

Published: 22 may 2025

Reference Book: 03001

Reference eBook [PDF]: 03001NUM

Reference eBook [ePub]: 03001EPB

EAN13 Book: 9782759240951

EAN13 eBook [PDF]: 9782759240968

EAN13 eBook [ePub]: 9782759240975

DOI eBook [PDF] : 10.35690/978-2-7592-4096-8

Interior: Black & white

Format (in mm) Book: 160 x 240

Pages count Book: 210

Pages count eBook [PDF]: 210

Weight (in grammes): 380

Size: 8.25 MB (PDF), 584 KB (ePub)

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