La participation des acteurs locaux à l’élaboration et l’évaluation des politiques publiques de développement durable  en Nouvelle-Calédonie

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate the conditions and the interests of a participatory reflexion on the sustainable development and its consequences to draw up and to assess development policies. After a brief display of the controversies carried out by the use and sense of the “sustainable development”, we explain what is at stake about durability in the context of New Caledonia. We choose to focus on linkages between three dimensions of the durability. We start from the local perceptions of the economic performance, the integrity of the environment and the social equity. As an illustration of what is at stake in sustainable development policies, we present the social management of the impacts of an important industrial project of extraction and treatment of the nickel in the North province of New Caledonia. Considering that participatory follow-up evaluation facilitate transversality and the social management of the impacts of the project, the article describes the principles to respect for the implementation of a participatory follow-up evaluation. These principles are based on the experiences of a research program built around the evaluation of a grassroots development project in the northern province of New Caledonia. Finally, we insist on the constraints in the efficiency of real participatory device and on the difficulties to follow principles of the sustainable development, especially in the context of the Pacific islands.

Keywords

• Sustainable development
• Public policies
• Participatory methods
• New-caledonia