Les dernières publications des membres du LISST

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Les pollutions, qu’il s'agisse de substances chimiques ou de gaz à effet de serre, engendrent une dégradation durable de l'environnement, affectant tant la biodiversité que la santé humaine. Loin de se limiter à de simples nuisances, ces pollutions sont désormais reconnues comme des délits ou des crimes, impliquant des victimes et des responsables. Face aux crises écologiques majeures, les attentes sociétales évoluent vers une meilleure reconnaissance des victimes, qu'elles soient humaines ou non humaines. Cependant, l'indemnisation et la réparation des préjudices sanitaires et environnementaux demeurent complexes. L'invisibilisation des victimes constitue un phénomène récurrent : qu'il s'agisse des riverains exposés à l'amiante, des populations affectées par les pesticides ou les PFAS, les procédures de reconnaissance restent longues et ardues. La séparation institutionnelle entre santé professionnelle et santé environnementale entrave la reconnaissance globale des atteintes subies par les populations. La difficulté à établir un lien de causalité entre l'exposition et le dommage représente un obstacle central à l'indemnisation, particulièrement pour les victimes non professionnelles. Les limites du droit existant persistent face aux pollutions différées et aux risques impactant les générations futures. Néanmoins, un mouvement récent émerge avec la montée en puissance du droit international et des juridictions régionales des droits de l'Homme, visant à pallier les carences nationales et à imposer aux États de nouvelles obligations et responsabilités.

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Although the term “Global South” has been increasingly invoked by heads of State as a call for enhanced multilateralism and institutional reform, its academic conceptualization remains underdeveloped. Therefore, we investigate how and where scientific knowledge about the Global South is produced, using a meta-analysis of around 17,000 articles [1994–2024] indexed in Scopus database. The paper shows that authors and funding are predominantly from Global North institutions, particularly the United States. However, rising powers are increasingly active contributors, notably South Africa, India, China and Brazil. The most frequent research topics include globalization, COVID-19, climate change, gender issues, neoliberalism, decolonization and sustainability. The results also reveal the centrality of Africa in the debate, and the underrepresentation of Global South institutions in leading journals. The conclusion calls for more scientific collaboration to improve visibility of knowledge produced in the Global South institutions and suggests that ESG may be a key player.

This study evaluates the modified areal weighting by control zones method (MAW-CZ) often involved in downscaling social data from a large spatial mesh, to a smaller mesh. This method has been extensively used in literature but the impossibil-ity, until recently, of accessing individual data makes it so that it has not been evaluated. In this study it is applied to two case studies, Toulouse and Grenoble-Alpes Metropoles, using the census INSEE data at the IRIS scale and the building islet or topographical reference units (RSU) scale. The study found that 27.2% of RSUs in the Toulouse metropolis and 21.9% in the Grenoble-Alpes metropolis are inhabited, with mean populations of 122 and 116 residents, and maximum populations of 2,429 and 6,451 residents, respectively in 2018. The chosen downscaling approach introduces small errors for small and medium-sizedRSUs. For example, 94%, 78%, and 72% of RSUs of <100, 101–255, and 256–500 inhabitants, respectively, are correctly classified by the modified areal weighting by control zones method in the Toulouse Metropole. However, there are significant differences for the most populated RSUs (the performance decreases to 60% for RSUs with more than 500 inhabitants), with this category having a representativeness of 8.4% and 7.2% of the total number of inhabited RSUs in the Toulouse and Grenoble-Alpes metropoles, respectively. The spatial distribution of the biased RSUs are nevertheless homogeneous throughout the two territories. These discrepancies are due to both the upscaling/downscaling methods used and the nature of the data (points in the upscaling and polygons in the downscaling).

While the human and social dimension of sustainability transitions is key to their undertaking, it is still insufficiently addressed and supported. In particular, the importance of communities, which has been highlighted by many disciplines, has not yet been tackled from an interdisciplinary perspective, resulting in a lack of a global vision of what a community is and of how to support one. We propose an interdisciplinary framework developed with the expertise of 20 researchers from 7 disciplines, each providing a specific insight on communities, and illustrations in the context of agroecological transitions. We analyzed 12 community frameworks and related key references used by the co-authors of this article in their research work. We identified three main dimensions that characterize the core of the concept of community, common to these 12 frameworks: (1) common constructs, (2) implementation and articulation of actions, and (3) feelings such as a shared sense of belonging, trust, co-responsibility, and legitimacy. We present key contributions of communities to sustainability transitions, and insights on how to support these communities. Communities can offer favorable conditions for individuals to express their ideas, desires, doubts, difficulties, and conflicts, and to address these through dialogue and collaboration. This can help individuals move forward in their decisions and actions. Communities are also a place of articulation between individual and collective actions, and can contribute to the transformation of society by redefining professional norms, and creating knowledge and innovations. Giving communities the necessary means to support its members and impact society implies investing in the development of collaboration skills within education systems and in providing dedicated training on community support to facilitators, addressing all three dimensions of communities.