La fabrique des acteurs de la justice environnementale dans l’Aire marine protégée du Bamboung au Sénégal

Abstract

Marine Protected Areas (AMP) are nowadays spaces for experimentation on environmental justice. Environmental justice doesn’t only aim to restore a natural order disrupted by pollution or the extraction of natural resources. It mainly concerns the distribution of goods and services, benefits and advantages derived from biodiversity. But how and through what mechanisms is it accessed? This article attempts to provide some answers to this question through the Bamboung AMP located in the Saloum delta in Senegal. The case study reveals that environmental justice actors embody a "conservationist" elite, aware of conservation issues and already having significant "socio-economic" capital enabling them to position themselves as "brokers" with donors and as advocates with local populations. They are far from being the first beneficiaries, those who have been harmed by the creation of the GPA. In this sense, practices conducted under the guise of environmental justice, and embodied by these actors, promote a certain social reproduction of inequalities and the maintenance of social, political and economic hierarchies. Such approaches would undoubtedly betray the idea of environmental justice that underpins the socio-economic development of protected areas and the sharing of the benefits derived from them.

Keywords

• conservation
• community
• access
• valorization
• redistribution