“We must be careful not to once again reject farmers outside the French family” underlines Jean Viard

Is the passage of the Olympic flame a good pretext to seize, to highlight all the struggles of the moment, whether social or ecological? This is the question we are asking ourselves today in “Question de société”, because environmental organizations are launching a call to mobilize today against megabasins in Vienne.

Environmental organizations are launching a call to mobilize today against megabasins. The authors of the appeal specify that it is not a question of disrupting the passage of the Olympic flame in Vienne, near Poitiers at this time, but of taking advantage of this moment, to mobilize to alert on the lack of resources allocated in particular to the issue of water. Decryption with sociologist Jean Viard.

franceinfo: If the goal is not to disrupt the passage of the flame, why aim for it?

Jean Viard: Every time there is a major international event in France, the same thing happens. You were young, but in 1998, at the time of the Football World Cup, including the plane strike, it finished the day before. So everyone tried to take advantage of it. It’s not just in France. One thing must be said, it is that totalitarian regimes have the big advantage that this does not happen. Russia, China, all that. But in democracies, it is a good pretext to demonstrate.

Afterwards, in France, there is a little extra, as always. It’s true that we will remember the people who run with their flag, next to the flame, etc. But let’s not act like this is new. I would say there is an opportunity. I think that it was also integrated into the financing plans of large public companies, transport, the police too, it seems normal to me, obviously, people take advantage of it, because there are cameras and the cameras move, because the flame is surrounded by a system of photos, films, etc. So, it’s fair game.

But then, there is a real subject, it is water, a major subject of the world of tomorrow, with global warming, so this year it has so much more, it has never rained so much since 1958. So we did not run out of water. But the question really arises, it is absolutely certain, and it is a subject which deserves debate, and it is a complicated subject, by territory, there are places, it is necessary to modify the cultural methods, the others , lifestyles.

There are places, you have to make basins. Well, here things are presented in a somewhat monological way, as if there was only one solution, by people who are generally not farmers. So I believe we must be careful not to once again reject farmers outside the French family, so to speak.

Today, in Vienne, those calling for demonstrations compare the money invested in the Olympic Games to make the Seine clean enough – so that people can swim there during the games, during certain events – with the money which would, for example, be necessary to serve environmental causes, particularly for water. Do you think this is relevant?

But everyone can say: it is better to do at my place than at the neighbor’s. I think that the Battle of the Seine is a main symbolic battle, a battle of living conditions for the entire Ile de France. If indeed there are people who are jumping into the water with the mayor of Paris, why not with the President of the Republic, it will be a global thing, to say that France is fighting for ecology. So that seems essential and positive to me.

Afterwards, in France, one day we will have to stop saying: we have put so many millions in this place, I want the same thing in this place. France spends too much, the State spends too much. We have to decide where we put the money and we are going to run out of it. So this speech of: ‘It’s because we made the Seine that we must make my river’, they are right, they have the same rights. Have a navigable and swimmable river, but you can’t do everything at the same time.

You have to do things, one after the other. There seems to me to be nothing scandalous about starting with the Seine. We learned our hands, we found techniques, we stocked up on water for when there are storms, the progress is considerable. I hope it will be useful later. But let’s not always try to denounce the things that work, if indeed swimming in the Seine is possible, which is not yet guaranteed.