Environmental Conflicts – policies without means? Studying a local environmental conflict near Nantes, France

While the ecological crisis is generally accepted as a fact, ways of dealing with it are still being debated. Individual actions are considered insufficient, and the response is often presented as political. How, then, can political actors respond concretely in the name of the climate emergency? I seek to explore this question based on a local environmental conflict where the individual and the political meet.

While working at the Council of Europe as a visiting scholar, I spent 8 weeks from January to March 2023 studying an environmental local conflict in France near Nantes. My fieldwork was conducted together with Ana Pich, an illustrator who accompanied me during all the interviews. She drew the encounters, while I asked the questions.

This teamwork allowed us to understand how mayors and local politicians participate in local environmental conflicts. I will first explain the development of environmental conflicts in France. As a second step, I will describe the situation of municipalities and mayors in France regarding local development. Finally, I will explain how politicians engage with these conflicts.

In the situation outlined previously, the actions of politicians, officials and activists were building a continuum of various involvements and strategies, blurring the border between being an activist versus being a politician. I found three different types of behavior that could change over time depending on the situation and of course the interlocutors:

• Politicians engaged from the beginning and not afraid to be confused with activists. They will constantly bring a political and activistic message to all audiences during the time of the conflict and beyond. The border between them is completely dissolved.
• Politicians who are politically engaged but want to ensure that they do not appear activistic. In those cases, if an event is not public, they can be part of it, and they give informal (but sometimes quite an important) support.
• Politicians who distinguish themselves from the activists, but who like to state that they have their “personal opinion” on the matter even if they do not want to make it public or to confuse it with their political work.

One important goal was to give more credibility to the environmental argument rather than the economic one. Conflicts were an opportunity to argue on the importance of “nature” and build a case through discussions that mayors and local politicians would not be able to share in the council reports for example. Action was mostly taking place through intense lobbying behind the scenes. When one mayor talked about the importance of biodiversity and changing the system, I asked him why it was not in his report. He answered me "well of course, you cannot write about that, you need to stick to very factual and technical arguments, but we discussed them among the council". Conflict settlement helps to seek for more legitimization of the environmental argument as it is not as evident as the economical one.