Institut Veolia Environnement

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Society and environmental issues

Ensuring the durability of natural resources depends not only on national decisions but also on the populations' taking this vital issue into account. Ideological and cultural factors will increasingly determine how a society views environmental problems. Education plays an essential role in heightening awareness of these challenges, notably by establishing good practices to avoid waste of natual resources, reduce health risks and participate in a more sustainable development. The work of the Institute in this field contributes to exploring the interaction of society and the environment.

Studies launched by the Institute

Dissemination of management models and tools betxeen north and south: The example of water supply in India

Partners: Eric Godelier, Director of Research, Management Research Centre (CRG), Ecole Polytechnique; Akil Amiraly, post-graduate, CRG, Ecole Polytechnique.
Period of study: 2005-2009

This research looks into the thought patterns and action and management rationales of public and private players responsible for water supply in Indian cities.

The programme starts from the fact that collective action is never based on the simple force of pure and abstract rationality which would lead to a single logical answer to all problems and situations. Therefore, an analysis should be carried out to determine to what extent management practices, tools and models are relative, inasmuch as they are determined by historical, sociological and cultural contexts.

Waste treatment in cities of the Developing World : The case of Alexandria, Egypt

Partners: Gilles Keppel, Director, middle-East Chair, Sciences-Po, Erhard Friedberg, Professor of University, Sciences-Po, Samir Hamek, post-graduate, Sciences-Po
Period of Study: 2006-2009

The study will address the question of sustainable development in the Arabo-Muslim world. It will attempt to understand how sociological dimensions can influence the implementation of environmental programmes and actions, with a particular focus on urban waste management concerns in Alexandria, Egypt.

Water symbolics and culture

Partner : Mohamed Larbi Bouguerra, former Professor at the University of Tunis, Tunisia, Research officer at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and former Associate Director of Research, CNRS, Paris, France.
Period of study: 2004-2005

Water, its symbolics, its various representations and uses are at the heart of, and allow us to commune with, nature. Most religions, beliefs, philosophies and visions of the world value water. This heritage, thousands of years old, is still dictating people's attitudes and even their reverence of and veneration for the resource. It is this forceful weight of history in the modern world that needs to be defined and highlighted in order to achieve mutual understanding and avoid dissension and conflicts.

Conference and other events

Conference TERI - IDDRI- Institut Veolia Environnement

« Energy, environment and development: analysing opportunities for reducing poverty»
14-16 December 2006, Bangalore

Partners : TERI India, IDDRI, France

Colloquium

Reminder about the cycle of environmental and animal ethics seminars

En amont de ce colloque, l'Institut et le Collège international de philosophie ont proposé un cycle de 3 séminaires autour de conférenciers américains reconnus dans leur champ de réflexion :

  • Bryan G. Norton, Professor of public policy at Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, on ecological pragmatism
  • Holmes Rolston III, Distinguished Professor of philosophy at the Colorado State University, on ecocentrism
  • Gary L. Francione, Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law & Philosophy, Rutgers School of Law, USA, on animal ethics.

For further details about these seminars :

« Ecosophies: philosophy put to the proof to ecology »

29 and 30 May 2008, at the Cité des Sciences in Paris
Partners : le Ministère de l'Ecologie, de l'Energie, du Développement durable et de l'Aménagement du territoire, le Collège International de philosophie, la Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie

The colloquium we organise has a strong international orientation and aims to bring in-depth reflection on the philosophical and political challenges raised by ecology to the attention of the French public. By calling into question the rationality of the dominant model of "civilisation", the ecological crisis reformulates with urgency the question of whether our societies are capable of radical change.

An understanding of the world we have in common, the world ecology would have us take up the challenge of sharing, demands a collective re-evaluation of presuppositions, of the principles and fundamental categories which condition our perception and definition of identity and otherness, of the possible or the impossible, the living or the dead, justice or injustice. These are the guidelines that the colloquium will seek to follow in a comparative approach of the perception of the ecological paradigm in various cultures and traditions of thought. It is a great opportunity for eminent figures of environmental ethics in the USA (John Baird Callicott, Andrew Light, Mark Sagoff among others) to share their reflection with French philosophers and scientists.

See the program of the colloquium (pdf - 130 Ko)