A photo hike, an outing to discover insects: the great celebration of nature ends today with many more activities near you. It is also the International Day for Biodiversity. With the sociologist Jean Viard, researcher at the CNRS, we ask ourselves the question of our relationship to nature, which obviously evolves over the years, decades, even centuries.
franceinfo: Today, with the issues of global warming and decline, we nevertheless have the impression that we have an ambiguous relationship with nature, with a desire to get closer to it, but also a difficulty in protecting it?
John Viard: It is a contradictory desire. On the one hand, we are an old peasant country, we built our identity on the sheaf of wheat, Marianne, etc. and that, little by little, especially with Gaullism, we made it the effigy of beauty. Gaullism decided that basically the beauty of a forest, for example, was a right superior to that of property. Because the beauty of the mountain, the beauty of the shores, and everything that was natural, even if you owned it, you could not destroy it because beauty is a common of all society. It corresponds to a change in mentalities linked to going on vacation and travelling, etc.
So I would say it’s beauty as nature, nature as beauty, nature as walking territory, as encounter. And that is important in a society where 70% of people have a garden. We have an image of France where we all live in tower blocks, towers are very useful, but the majority of French people live in individual houses with gardens. So that is nature beauty, nature environment, nature pleasure, etc.
And then on the other side, there is something else, it is that we have transformed nature so much, but very involuntarily, that it has started to warm up and that today it is nature that makes history, it is no longer humanity. What transforms societies is global warming and this global warming, we run behind to protect ourselves, to see how to try to reduce its development but not eliminate it – we will never succeed – and how societies will change in the face of global warming.
So nature is on one side, the beauty we love, the bouquets of flowers we offer when we are in love, etc. And on the other, it is this nature that has been set on fire, and which is leading humanity on an absolutely incredible race. Obviously, this race scares us because we don’t know if we’re going to win it.
As you said, a majority of French people today live in a house with a garden. And there is this desire in the cities despite everything, to also have a little corner of the garden, its small plants on its balcony, these cherry tomatoes?
That and then the fact that we are going to put forests back in the cities, it’s the only way to lower the temperature. You know, ground that’s bare, in the summer, it’s between 40 and 60 degrees. A ground that has short grass, it is at 25 degrees, and a ground that has tall grass, it is around 18 degrees, so with the same sunshine, you have almost a single to triple the heat produced by the ground . Why ? Because plant tissue, as they say, protects life. That’s why the city is going to plant trees. We will also plant grass. Stop mowing the lawns, we’ll let the grass grow, a city like Nantes is way ahead of that. it’s been a long time since they cut the grass in summer, they let it go up everywhere on roundabouts, in gardens, etc…
And it’s important for biodiversity too…
It’s important for biodiversity, it’s important for bringing down the heat. And then, it’s important to tell humans: we’re going to win this battle. There are solutions, micro-solutions: let the grass grow, plant trees, reduce costs, and then there are other solutions: change energy, modify energy production systems, etc. … We are engaged in a battle against nature where the main player in history tomorrow is global warming, and humanity must try to rebuild itself in the face of this thing which is an event produced by nature. humanity – of course by the industrial period – but on which one does not have the hand for the moment.
In the medium term, we may be able to reduce the phenomenon, but we are certain that it will warm up, say, by a degree and a half in 30 years. There, we have no room for negotiation. So nature beauty and nature danger, and the strength of humanity, it’s going to be to be between the two. The game is not won, but it is not lost.