VertigO (Dec 2012)
Adaptations locales de dispositifs agrienvironnementaux français et européens dans deux départements d’Outre-mer français : la Réunion et la Guadeloupe
Abstract
Environmental stakes are partially tackled in European Agricultural Policy by promoting changes in farmers’ practices through agri-environmental measures (AEM). In France, these measures are implemented in various types of contracts between farmers and government agriculture offices. The rationale of these contracts has shifted from a farm multifunctionality-grant paradigm to a new paradigm of compensating the extracosts of specific environmental practices developed in farm plots. In this paper, we analyzed how this paradigm shift was put into practice. We studied the implementation of AEM in the Guadeloupe and Reunion Island, which are small islands and UE outermost regions. In these two islands, the agricultural productivist model is dominant, export-oriented, and actively supported by public policies. Although these islands face environmental stakes and are subject to the UE environmental standards, we showed that the agricultural stakeholders have adapted the various agri-environmental schemes in order to maintain the productivity of agriculture and the support to the dominant farming industry. In a first stage, farmers entered in the hybrid multifunctionality agreements and have subscribed the integrated measures. But in a second stage, farmers did not subscribe the latest generation of AEM. We observed that the operationalization of agri-environment policy schemes is utterly unchanged and that agricultural institutions still formulate and manage these schemes. But the lack of coordination between farming and environmental stakeholders prevents the appropriation of environmental issues by the farmers. Accordingly, this lack of coordination does not allow for the convergence of the agricultural production and the provision of environmental services in order to foster rural areas’ spatial planning and governance.
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