Anthropological nature of environmental conflicts[Les conflits d'environnement : entre sites et réserves]

This article deals with conflicts related to the implementation of the policies of environment in the rural areas. It concerns two contrasted forms of environmental protection. The first one (Integral Forest Biological Reserve) is of sanctuarist type, therefore incompatible with human activities, while the second one (resulting from the Habitats directive) proceeds of a step of dialogue and does not exclude the human presence. These two situations are interesting because no emblematic species of fauna or of flora is really pointed out, which invites to seek elsewhere the reasons of the conflicts which are spread there, at the base of dynamic particularly structuring for the rural territories. Based on an ethnographic step, the reflexion shows that these conflicts of environment lead the collectives to redefine their relations with the resources and natural spaces and so doing, to adjust the social relationships (made of authority, competition, and/or association) that they maintain the ones with the others. It is shown there that the anthropological nature of the conflicts of environment is due above all to the way in which the collectives take care to ensure their perenniality in space and time.