La structuration de l’économie de l’environnement et du développement en France : le cas du CIRED (1968-1986)

Abstract

In the 1970s, in France, a few researchers such as Ignacy Sachs and René Passet elaborated innovative research programmes to have a better understanding of development (North and South) and environmental issues. On the basis of archives and interviews, this article reconstructs and analyses the structuring process, both intellectual and institutional, of the environment-development expertise in France. The case of CIRED, created by Sachs in 1973, helps us illuminate how this new agenda was settled. Our findings are the followings: the support from national and international institutions has been crucial; and while the new expertise tried to become a new, autonomous field, it finally had to go through a normalization process to exist in the academic landscape of the 1980s.

Keywords

• environmental economics
• development economics
• scientific agenda
• Sachs
• eco-development