Faut-il brûler les Znieff ?

Abstract

Biodiversity stakes are getting more and more important in country planning. In France, knowledge about nature is principally founded on a very original data base gathered at the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) and in the state administration of environment: the Natural Interesting Zones about Ecology, Fauna and, Flora in French, Zones Naturelles d’Intérêt Ecologique, Faunistique et Floristique (ZNIEFF). ZNIEFF cover more than 20% of French surface. It was only a knowledge zoning, at the beginning. Over the years, it evolved into a power and planning zoning. It is nowadays an argument for many territorial politics. Administration and MNHN present the ZNIEFF database as a scientific inventory. Yet, mapping analyses show considerable disparities of covering between French regions with no relation with ecological local reality. For example, ZNIEFF surface is more important around Paris than in Limousin region where large wild areas still exist. This fact introduces a problem of legitimacy and equity as soon as this data base is shown as the low in democratic country planning process. Here we show that knowledge of nature is not regular on the territory and its scientific (biological) foundations are very thin. As ZNIEFF are the bases of main politics, the entire nature conservation and protection system is unstable in this country. Nevertheless, this data base is a very interesting construction from local partnerships; a cognitive production which could be used in a different way.

Keywords

• biodiversity
• cartography
• democracy
• regional planning
• equity
• GIS