What is the meaning and role of a rural municipality today? The sociologist Jean Viard, director of research at the CNRS wonders today about rurality. Our rural territories are undergoing profound changes. Local elected officials are often at the forefront of many of these transitions.
franceinfo: For these local elected officials, for the next five years, what to do? What are the big issues today?
John Viard: We must not have a “postcard” vision of the traditional rural world. The rural world, there are places like a vast peri-urban area in the throes of upheaval. There are places like Lozère, Corrèze, where it’s a bit like traditional France with its towns and steeples. And then there is obviously the rural world of the Great Plains, Beauce, Brie or there, roughly, as far as the eye can see, there are fields and quite a few inhabitants.
There are all these worlds. They must not be mixed up completely because a large part of the rural world lives in the orbit of the metropolises, and within it, there is on one side, the rural world “yellow vests”, the world of housing estates which is spread around the cities. Then on the other side, there is the rural world “teleworkers sores” to make it quick, all these urbanites who straddle the city and the countryside, who have gone to the Loire Valley, Burgundy, etc.
And then there is the truly traditional rural world, small towns relatively isolated from each other, often a little in the process of being depopulated, but not everywhere, because the rural world is fashionable. 80% of Parisian executives dream of leaving Paris to go there, or to go to the provinces. So we have to realize that we are no longer in the great period of loss, there are new issues, new populations, and then there are local elected officials, who are often dynamic.
Since there are ultimately a lot of different ruralities, we imagine that the needs and expectations of mayors are not the same, and it is an important issue to meet them?
The issues are primarily service issues. We are in a society, more and more, of local and delivery. But this is also the case in the countryside. This obviously applies to cities, but Amazon exists everywhere. They have specific problems, in particular the problem of generalized broadband: it is a very big problem in the so-called white zones. The health problem is not done.
And then there is the reversal, the rural world, it is also where we capture carbon, the forest, agricultural work. We can have agriculture that captures carbon. We can work our forests much more. It’s basically our great carbon sink, the rural world, and if we look at it like that, that gives it a completely new function in the world we’re building.
200 rural mayors will therefore work for a year on this climate challenge, coordinate public action in the territories, and above all highlight the climate issues specific to these rural territories. Is there a real lever there in the ecological transition?
This is a major issue because the ecological transition will be both very local and very global. You have to do both. Each of us is going to sort our trash and at the same time, we obviously have to build low-carbon energy systems and build a recycling economy. So each territory and especially the territories where there is nature, forest, wet places, it is an issue.
One of the major issues will be water management. We talked about it this summer, with the warming, it will continue. Do we make basins or not? Do we store water in the winter? There, there is a whole major issue around water in the rural area. Water for drinking and obviously water for agriculture.
That’s why the issue of links, you know, in small towns, the post office now has little booths, where you can put bread or perhaps your groceries. There are lots of new local services which are essential to the sometimes somewhat elderly populations of these territories. There are all these services which are obviously a very important issue for the quality of life.