Magalie Bourblanc

Cirad - La recherche agronomique pour le développement | CIRAD

The chapter’s ambition is to propose a less anthropocentric approach of environmental policy analysis, i.e., an approach that would cease to view humans as separated from and even above the rest of nature. In that respect, I elaborated the concept of instrumented expert knowledge which cross-fertilizes the insights of a critical sociology of knowle...

In ever larger areas of the world, climate change is increasing water demand while shrinking water supplies. As a result, many efforts are underway to define whether any given water project decreases or further increases water users' vulnerability to climate change, especially in the agricultural sector. A number of challenges in making these asses...

Large-scale agricultural investments (LAIs) transform land use systems worldwide. There is, however, limited understanding about how the common global drivers of land use change induce different forms of agricultural investment and produce different impacts on the ground. This article provides a crosscountry comparative analysis of how differences...

In this chapter, we study expert reporting as a type of political work that can powerfully link public problem with policy solutions. Expert reporting and categories can more efficiently play a binding and cementing role between problem definition and policy solution since they display the same properties as policy instruments (Lascoumes & Le Galès...

The book revisits the stage of formulating policy solutions by investigating the basic political dimensions inherent to this critical phase of the policy process. It focuses attention on how policymakers craft their policy proposals, match them with public problems, debate their feasibility to build coalitions and dispute their acceptability as ser...

Introduction Our objective in this chapter is to study expert reporting as a type of political work that can powerfully link public problems with policy solutions. In particular, we look at expert categorization as a type of binding process for policy problems and solutions. Expert categories are both discursive and material arguments: they represe...

Despite harmful impacts on coastal communities and biodiversity for a few decades, eutrophication of marine systems only recently gained public visibility. Representing a major land-based pollution, it is now considered as the most striking symptom of intractable disruption of biogeochemical nutrients cycles at a global scale, due to massive phosph...

Despite causing harmful impacts on coastal communities and biodiversity for a few decades, eutrophication of marine systems has only recently gained public visibility. Representing a major land-based pollution, eutrophication is now considered the most striking symptom of intractable disruption of biogeochemical nutrient cycles at a global scale. T...

Despite causing harmful impacts on coastal communities and biodiversity for a few decades, eutrophication of marine systems has only recently gained public visibility. Representing a major land-based pollution, eutrophication is now considered the most striking symptom of intractable disruption of biogeochemical nutrient cycles at a global scale. T...

Since the late 2000s, public policies have been developed in both the North and the South to adapt agriculture to climate change while still addressing the challenges of food security. Managing the decrease in rainfall and its uncertainties is one of the priority challenges for governments, farmers and their organisations. In a bid to adapt agricul...

This paper seeks to explain the emergence of South African inclusive agricultural business models in relation to the land reform policy. We demonstrate that in South Africa such policy instruments linking small-scale and large-scale farmers respond to endogenous dynamics linked to the failure of its land reform policy. We study the land reform poli...

Given the existence of a thriving epistemic community on water sciences, the high politicization of environmental issues in the country as well as the active mobilization of a grassroot movement inspired by environmental justice, South Africa appears to be an ideal case to study the development of a political ecology (PE) approach. Moreover, since...

This article contributes to unraveling the ‘paradox of scientific authority’, that is, the fact that despite the loss of authority of scientific expertise, policymakers still resort to expert advice. Reexamining the role ascribed to expert assessment in the policy-making process in controversial contexts in particular, the article succeeds in demon...

Trente ans après les premiers programmes publics de reconquête de la qualité des eaux en Bretagne, les problèmes liés aux activités d'élevage intensif figurent toujours aujourd'hui à l'agenda public. Il semble que ces problèmes, dont la définition a connu de multiples rebondissements au fi l des ans, ne soient pas parvenus à modifier en profondeur...

Depuis les années 1980-1990, de nombreux pays, au Sud comme au Nord, intègrent dans des dispositifs d'action publique (réglementaire ou autre) un nouvel objectif de gestion des cours d'eau aux prétentions proprement environnementales : la notion de « débit environnemental » ou encore de « besoin en eau des écosystèmes aquatiques ». Ces notions sont...

This paper studies the implementation of national public policies tackling rural poverty in South Africa and draws a parallel with international development aid public policies, stressing in particular one of their common predicaments, i.e. their relative ineffectiveness. Building on the key notion of "brokerage" in anthropology, and coupling it wi...

La place qu’occupent les consultants de cabinets privés dans la conduite de l’action publique est un phénomène particulièrement frappant dans le domaine de la gestion de la ressource en eau en Afrique du Sud. À première vue, le recours aux consultants semble être la conséquence directe de la mise en oeuvre d’une réforme de type New Public Managemen...

Le présent document, constitue la synthèse du rapport d’une Expertise scientifique collective confiée par les ministères en charge de l’environnement et de l’agriculture et l’Agence française pour la biodiversité au CNRS, à l’Ifremer, à l’INRA et à Irstea. Il a été élaboré par un collectif d’experts scientifiques sans condition d’approbation préala...

Bridging the water infrastructure gap has become a major policy concern. In rural areas of Africa, access to water is as much constrained by territorial coverage as it is by the poor conditions of water points due to the difficulty in mobilizing communities for repairs. This paper examines the equity considerations of a rural water and sanitation p...

Résumé Nous analysons dans cet article trois dispositifs sociotechniques de gestion de la pénurie en eau mis en œuvre sur la rivière Crocodile en Afrique du Sud : un processus de réallocation de la ressource (compulsory licensing), un modèle informatisé de gestion en temps réel et une détermination plus précise du débit environnemental. Cette analy...

For many years, South Africa had represented a typical example of a hydrocracy. Following the democratic transition in South Africa, however, new policy paradigms emerged, supported by new political elites from the ANC. A reform of the water policy was one of the priorities of the new Government, but with little experience in water management, they...

To address the challenges associated with under-utilised smallholder irrigation schemes located in former homeland areas in South Africa, strategic partnerships between black farmers and white, established commercial farmers have been implemented by the Limpopo Provincial Department of Agriculture since the 2000s. This article aims to explain the a...

La prolifération des algues vertes échouées sur les plages est un problème inscrit à l’agenda public depuis les années 1980 en Bretagne (France). Passé d’un problème essentiellement local au départ à un problème d’envergure nationale depuis la fin des années 2000, ce cas offre une illustration particulièrement frappante de cette idée que les indica...

Cet article propose un modèle visant à expliquer la diversité et l’évolution des principes qui structurent la gestion des services d’eau potable et d'assainissement à travers le monde. Il questionne un modèle purement évolutionniste, reconstitué à partir de travaux existants. Ce dernier suggère un sens dans l’évolution des modèles structurant la ge...

With its ‘ecological reserve’, South African National Water Act of 1998 is perceived as one of the most ambitious Water Acts in the world from an environmental perspective. At first sight, this ‘ecological reserve’ provision could be mistaken for a typical case of North–South policy transfer when actually it was initially engineered by the Departme...

This paper uses the water-reallocation scheme created within the National Water Act (1998) to analyze the impacts of water policy on farm livelihoods in South Africa. Based on one of the most water stressed catchments in the country, the Olifants river basin, we provide an integrated modeling approach combining water and agricultural modules to inv...

The implementation of Catchment Management Agencies (CMAs) was supposed to be the cornerstone of the rescaling process of the South African water reform policy. Yet, less than 10 years after the adoption of the National Water Act, the process was suspended for 4 years and by 2012 only two CMAs had been established. Combining approaches in geography...

EsCo : Elevage et Azote. Les flux d’azote liés aux élevages. Réduire les pertes, rétablir les équilibres

Scientific literature in social sciences that deals with nitrate embraces two centuries, whereas very little socio-economic work has addressed other forms of reactive nitrogen. Nitrogen has always had an ambivalent role as both a raw material indispensable for the development of agricultural and a source of negative impacts. This ambivalence has ac...

Cet ouvrage met à disposition des décideurs et des acteurs publics et privés les connaissances scientifiques actualisées sur les flux d’azote liés aux élevages et leur devenir. Il permet également d’identifier des options d’ordre technologique, organisationnel, structurel ou territorial permettant de réduire les pressions des émissions azotées issu...

The claim that public problems are constructs is now widely recognized as justified and was first established in social problem theory. The high instability of problem definition activities in the case of water pollution coming from agriculture in Brittany demonstrates this particularly well. The objective of this article is to describe ways by whi...

Reading the available evidence on the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), one gets the impression that some countries anticipate implementation problems by starting off pragmatically and with relatively low ambitions, while others make a quick and ambitious start and tend to slow down in later phases of the process. Insp...

The Changing course of South Africa’s “Ecological Reserve” From a Planning to an Ecological Rationale With its “Ecological Reserve”, the 1998 South African Water Reform Act is regarded as pioneering as far as environmental issues are concerned. This engagement towards such issues is surprising, especially in a semi-arid country that has the additio...

L'élevage transforme l'azote des végétaux en produits animaux et en rejette une partie sous forme de déjections, qui peuvent être utilisées comme engrais. Toutefois le développement des productions animales a conduit dans certains territoires à une concentration des apports et rejets d'azote, et une pollution des eaux, du sol et de l'atmosphère. Ce...

In the aftermath of Apartheid era, the new democratic South African regime prioritized the adoption of reform Acts on land and water issues in particular. Indeed, water access especially has demonstrated the most striking inequalities among the South African racially-divided society (Schreiner and van Koppen, 2002). However the National Water Act v...

This article addresses the dilemma of the democratic development of water resources management in the context of Post-Apartheid South Africa and unequal access to water. Using a political sociology of public policy approach as a conceptual framework, this article focuses on the actual functioning of the catchment management agencies (CMAs). On the...

Emancipated instruments Through the study of public programs for water quality restoration in Côtes-d’Armor (France), the author underlines that despite the introduction of new environmental objectives within the regional agricultural policy, continuity prevails over dynamics of change. This continuity can be explained through the mobilization of a...

Through the study of public programs to restore water quality in the Côtes-d’Armor, the author underlines that, despite the introduction of new environmental objectives within regional agricultural policy, continuity prevails over dynamics of change. This continuity is explained via an analysis that focuses on the policy instruments intended to imp...

Du fait de leur forte concentration dans certaines zones en France, les productions avicoles et porcines sont associées à de nombreux problèmes environnementaux dus à l’épandage de leurs rejets. Outre la quantité brute de rejets, leur composition, notamment en azote, phosphore et oligoéléments, est une source de pollution des eaux et des sols. Jusq...

Since they are highly concentrated in some areas in France, poultry and pig production are associated to numerous environmental problems, as a consequence of their manure spreading. Beyond the raw quantity of manure, manure composition, especially in nitrogen, phosphorus, and oligo-elements, is a major source of water and soil pollution. Until now,...

Since they are highly concentrated in some areas in France, poultry and pig production are associated to numerous environmental problems, as a consequence of their manure spreading. Beyond the raw quantity of manure, manure composition, especially in nitrogen, phosphorus, and oligo-elements, is a major source of water and soil pollution. Until now,...

Cet article traite des pollutions agricoles que génèrent, en Bretagne, les exploitations d’élevage intensif, pollutions qui affectent les ressources en eau. Celles-ci sont désignées par un terme savant : « pollutions diffuses ». Laissant de côté la constitution originelle, d’un point de vue scientifique, de ces phénomènes, les auteures s’intéressen...

In Brittany, France, intensive farming operations have produced a so-called "diffused" pollution of water resources. Leaving aside this phenomenon's scientific aspects, attention is turned to the way social and political circles see and handle this sort of pollution, and to the strategies which this "diffuse" pollution from farming allows for. An e...

Si aux Pays-Bas, le problème des pollutions agricoles a catalysé, à l’issue de vingt années d’action publique, le démantèlement de la coalition d’acteurs corporatistes agricoles, en France en revanche, les problèmes de pollutions agricoles et de qualité de l’eau n’ont fait qu’accélérer la concentration des élevages et le modèle intensif dans la dro...