Environmental Politics In France

Brendan Prendiville

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367016739
• eBook ISBN: 9780429723438
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

This book analyzes the history and growth of the French environmental movement from its origins in the "back to the earth" wave of the early 1970s to its current influence on every political party from the Trotskyist left to the extreme right of the National Front..

1
The History

In this chapter we will trace the history of French environmentalism. In the lively 1970s, it was a diffuse movement and “culturally (…) extremist” (Boy 1981:400). During a decade of wider opposition to the right-wing President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, it joined forces with other new social movements which sprung out of May 1968 (e.g. feminists, regionalists, consumers etc.) for whom institutional politics was to be avoided at all costs. This was a time of street demonstrations and extra-parliamentary activity during which any electioneering was purely an exercise in biodegradable politics. The following decade began with a search for the ‘alternative society’ before giving way to a gradual electoral institutionalization.

Fertile Ground

The French environmental movement can be traced back to the first conservationist association founded by Isadore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (Société Impériale d’Acclimatation). Today’s FNE (France-Nature-Environnement), the FNSPN (Fédération Nationale des Sociétés de Protection de la Nature) of 1969 and the SNPN (Société Nationale de Protection de la Nature) of 1958 are each a part of this conservationist strand of the environmental equation which changed little until the first signs of water pollution became apparent in the 1950s. In 1962, the first opposition to nuclear power was manifested by a certain Jean Pignero when he created the association, APRI (Association pour la Protection contre les Rayonnements Ionisants) in reaction to compulsory X-rays for children and nuclear testing.¹ The same year heralded the first press campaign against pollution by the journalist Pierre Pellerin in journals such as the Bêtes et Nature, Guérir, Toute la Pêche, Le Monde and La Vie. In 1965, Jean Dorst, Professor at the Natural History Museum in Paris, published his book, Avant que la nature meure and two years later, the Torrey Canyon oil spill hit the English and Breton coasts, affecting the public environmental consciousness for the first time.

1968

The influence of the events of 1968 on environmentalism has been noted by different commentators² and, indeed, it would seem a fundamental reference point in any understanding of the new content and forms of political expression that the environmentalists have tried to institute. The first signs of popular discontent of a qualitative nature are to be found at this time as the concept of ‘environmentalism’ took over from that of ‘conservationism’, as critiques of the consumer society drew closer to those concerning industrial pollution, as the radical critique of daily life previewed the environmentalists’ rejection of “tomorrow’s paradise” (les lendemains qui chantent). If environmentalism is a product of the “western plethora of the second half of the twentieth century” (Simonnet 1979: 124), the premisses to environmental analyses concerning the need for a healthy civil society³ can be traced back to the students’ movement of May 1968 and its demands for greater autonomy. To take one example in the realm of urban environmentalism; the first signs of protest concerning the wastage and pollution of individual transport, as opposed to collective transport considered to be less wasteful, could be seen with the creation of the association, Fédération Nationale des Usagers des Transports (FNAUT), in January of the same year.

Elections and Organizations

With regard to electoral progress, the first environmental candidate to stand in an election was at Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin) in March 1973 for the legislative elections of that year. It was no surprise that this first campaign took place in the east of France, given its geographical position placing it at the heart of Europe and leaving it open to influences from other countries. In the event, the candidate received as large a share of the vote as the PSU,⁴ setting the stage for a long rivalry between the alternative left and the environmentalists.

In March 1971, the French branch of the Friends of the Earth (Amis de la Terre) was created and was soon to become a central pillar of the environmental movement. The originality of this organization was that it had a ‘foot’ in both the vertical and horizontal axes of environmentalism. That is to say that it considered working for change in political society (e.g. elections, organization of political structure) and civil society (e.g. associational life) to be equally important. In November 1982 it decided to concentrate on civil society while others concentrated on political society (see below 1982–1989) but during the 1970s it was to be very much in the environmental forefront organizing actions such as the popular bike demonstrations against the inner Parisian two-lane highway in the early 1970s. It was also to become the springboard of Brice Lalonde’s⁵ political career.

Activism

The Vanoise’ Affair. With regard to what could already be called environmental activism, this post-1968 period was fertile. In 1969 the first major environmental struggle was to take place. The project of building a ski resort in the Vanoise National Park,⁶ albeit strictly illegal, was given the go-ahead sparking off a massive reaction (500,000 protest letters). The campaign was led by a journalist (Jean Carlier) who had created the AJEPNE (Association des Journalistes et Ecrivains pour la Protection de la Nature et de l’Environnement) a year earlier, and was supported by the newly-created FNSPN (Fédération Nationale des Sociétés de la Protection de la Nature).⁷ Together they were successful in putting a stop to the project and furthering the political consciousness of many hitherto apolitical conservationists.

Nuclear Power and Non-Violence. The first major antinuclear demonstration in France was organized by the CSFR (Comité de Sauvegarde de Fessenheim et de la Plaine du Rhin; BasRhin) on the 12 April 1971 bringing together 1,300 people. Three months later, the demonstration against the Bugey nuclear plant (Ain), called for by Pierre Fournier in Charlie Hebdo⁸ was a surprising success with 15,000 people turning up to bathe in the July sun. Claude Vadrot (Vadrot 1978) remembers that the first signs of a split could already be seen in this demonstration between the ‘anarchists’⁹ and the ‘organizers’ in the environmental movement. This split was to widen over the years.

Two months before the Bugey demonstration, the battle between the small farmers of the Larzac plateau (Aveyron) and the French army was just beginning. The army wished to extend an a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 The History
• 2 Environmentalists and Political Culture in France
• 3 Environmental Ideology
• 4 Typology and Social Base of French Environmentalism
• CONCLUSION
• Appendix 1: Administrative Maps of France
• Appendix 2: Administrative Regions and Departments of France
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Bibliography
• About the Book and Author
• Index