Analyse cognitive d’une politique publique : justice environnementale et marchés ruraux de bois-énergie

The article describes how the policy concept of ‘rural charcoal markets’ coined in the 1990s by French technical assistants in West Africa was implemented a decade later in Madagascar by a pilot project to experiment a nationwide policy of forest management for domestic energy. The main goals of this policy are to provide cheap and sustainable domestic energy sources to poor urban dwellers; and to reduce the poverty of rural households by promoting sustainable forest management including income generation through producing and marketing charcoal. The article is based on the author’s personal fieldwork and presents a cognitive (i.e., social constructivist) analysis of this policy program which leads up to four main conclusions. (i) The ecological inefficiency of rural markets is not considered a public problem as long as the task of providing cheap charcoal to urban dwellers is socially perceived to be effectively and equitably solved by parallel product chains. (ii) The cultural relativity of this conception of environmental justice is universal insofar as the overriding goal of providing cheap charcoal to urban dwellers is shared and invoked by international aid donors. (iii) The pilot project under study is a case of normative inversion where previously existing policy solutions determined the ways in which the public problem came to be identified. (iv) The concept of rural fuel-wood market is a cognitive framework for viewing the world, which justifies policy measures to be adopted by invoking factual information even when this cultural representation is not widely shared by targeted populations and administrations.RésuméMadagascar élabore depuis 1999 une politique publique relative à l’énergie domestique expérimentée d’abord dans le cadre d’un programme pilote financé par l’aide internationale. Les deux principaux objectifs de cette politique sont, d’une part, l’approvisionnement durable des populations urbaines à faible pouvoir d’achat en charbon de bois pour la cuisson et, d’autre part, de réduire la pauvreté des ménages ruraux par des activités génératrices de revenus tels que l’exploitation et le commerce du charbon de bois dans le cadre d’une gestion durable des forêts. L’article est fondé sur les enquêtes de terrain de l’auteur et présente une analyse cognitive (c’est-à-dire social-constructiviste) de ce programme pilote qui débouche sur quatre principales conclusions. (i) L’inefficacité écologique des marchés ruraux n’est pas per ue comme un problème public tant que l’approvisionnement des villes en charbon au moindre co t est socialement ten