Round Tables > Environmental questions

ENVIRONMENTAL COUNTER-POWERS IN THE AMERICAS

Wednesday, September 22nd, 10am-12pm 

Centre de Colloques, room 3

Organization : Pierre Gautreau (PRODIG - Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne), Franck Poupeau (IHEAL CREDA – Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Speakers : Eve Anne Bühler (Université Fédérale de Rio de Janeiro), Joan Cortinas (CSO – Sciences Po), Claude Le Gouill (IHEAL CREDA – Université Sorbonne Nouvelle), Laetitia Perrier-Bruslé (Université de Lorraine)

Presentation : While openly eco-sceptic governments were elected in Brazil and the US (Bolsonaro and Trump), many States within these federations constituted forces of resistance to the dismantling of the environmental policies inherited from the 1990-2000s. Maintenance of conservation budgets, efforts to adhere to the Paris Agreement perspectives, openly critical statements of federal government decisions... Those are all actions that often reduced the revisionist scope of said governments, and showed that the institutionalization of environmental questions was globally guaranteed by the complexity of the political architecture which constitutes the federal system. However, federal States are not the only ones to experience this redistribution of environmental institutionalization capacities, and resistance to the dismantling of the national policies also takes place within the increasing importance of the role of municipalities. Taking a step away from research focused on national environmental policies and their setbacks, or from those giving priority to social movements as a factor of change or resistance, this round table seeks to highlight the more discrete but probably decisive role of such local governments as the municipalities and the federate states, in the genesis of environmental institutionalization on the two continents.