The Impact of Legal Vulnerability on Environmental Inequalities. a Case Study of Coastal Populations in Guadeloupe
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Archive Ouverte en Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication The impact of legal vulnerability on environmental inequalities. A case study of coastal populations in Guadeloupe (French Antilles) Cécilia Claeys, Cé Cilia Claeys, Marie-Laure Lambert, Aurélie Arnaud To cite this version: Cécilia Claeys, Cé Cilia Claeys, Marie-Laure Lambert, Aurélie Arnaud. The impact of legal vulnerability on environmental inequalities. A case study of coastal populations in Guadeloupe (French Antilles). Comptes Rendus Géoscience, Elsevier Masson, 2017, 349 (6-7), pp.351 - 358. 10.1016/j.crte.2017.09.006. hal-01768725 HAL Id: hal-01768725 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01768725 Submitted on 17 Apr 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. C. R. Geoscience 349 (2017) 351–358 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Comptes Rendus Geoscience ww w.sciencedirect.com External Geophysics, Climate and Environment The impact of legal vulnerability on environmental inequalities. A case study of coastal populations in Guadeloupe (French Antilles) a, b b Ce´cilia Claeys *, Aure´lie Arnaud , Marie-Laure Lambert a LPED, Laboratoire ‘‘Population Environnement De´veloppement’’, Centre Saint-Charles, case 10, Aix-Marseille University, 3, place Victor- Hugo, 13331 Marseille cedex 03, France b LIEU, Laboratoire interdisciplinaire ‘‘Environnement et Urbanisme’’, Aix-Marseille University, 3, avenue Robert-Schuman, 13100 Aix-en- Provence, France A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history: This paper draws on sociology, geography and law to analyse the exposure of populations Received 22 September 2017 to coastal multihazards in a postcolonial and overseas context. The research is based on a Received in revised form 24 September 2017 case study conducted in two municipalities in Guadeloupe (French Antilles): Deshaies and Accepted after revision 24 September 2017 Capesterre-Belle-Eau. The corpus of data consists of 52 interviews conducted with inhabitants and institutional actors, as well as a set of spatialized data and a regulatory corpus. The analysis underscores how public policies must contend with a complex Handled by Isabelle Manighetti, territorial reality that is still bound to the postcolonial past and legacy of slavery in Rutger De Wit, Ste´phanie Duvail, Guadeloupe. The potential contradictions between regularization policies, hazard and Patrick Seyler prevention policies and policies to curb insalubrious housing tend to expose the most Keywords: fragile populations to what we refer to here as legal vulnerability. C ´ Coastal hazards 2017 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS on behalf of Academie des sciences. Environmental inequalities Legal vulnerability Postcolonialism Postslavery Guadeloupe Interdisciplinary 1. Introduction municipalities in Guadeloupe (French Antilles): Deshaies and Capesterre-Belle-Eau (CPE), respectively on the west This paper draws on sociology, geography and law to and east coast of the island of Basse-Terre, and both provide an interdisciplinary analysis of how exposure to exposed to multiple coastal hazards (Fig. 1). natural hazards intersects with social vulnerabilities. We The question underpinning this article is the following: examine the exposure of populations to coastal natural which factors aggravate the socio-environmental vulnera- hazards in a postcolonial and overseas context. Our bility of coastal populations despite the implementation of research is based on a case study conducted in two well-intended public policies? Our main focus is on legal vulnerability, which tends to further encompass other types of vulnerability. Legal vulnerability may result from historical legacy and/or contemporary processes. It has * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Claeys). two dimensions that are interrelated: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.crte.2017.09.006 C 1631-0713/ 2017 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS on behalf of Acade´mie des sciences. 352 C. Claeys et al. / C. R. Geoscience 349 (2017) 351–358 Fig. 1. Map of the fieldwork sites. access to legal tools and information, their understand- inequalities in general and to coastal environmental ing and handling; inequalities more specifically (Jonah and Kofi Adu-Boahen, the legal situation of individuals and their assets 2016; Licuanan et al., 2015). (occupation without right or entitlement, involuntary detention of a fraudulent property title, inability to provide proof that would allow a situation to be 2. Context legalized, presence on the territory without a stay document, undeclared professional activity, etc.). As a colonial settlement, Guadeloupe was organized around plantations, with preference given to the plateaus of Grande Terre and the fertile volcanic land on the Our research is conceived within the analytical periphery of Basse-Terre (Sainton, 2012). In 1674, an edict framework of environmental inequality. The notion of by King Louis XIV of France declared that the coastal zone environmental inequality designates situations in which of the French Antilles was the property of the State and environmental vulnerabilities (exposure to environmental could not be built-up along a strip that ran 81.20 meters hazards or inaccessibility to environmental amenities) and 1 inland. The role of these ‘‘50 Steps of the King’’ was to social vulnerabilities are compounded (Taylor, 2000). facilitate military defence, traffic flows and access to the Previous research has shown that a large array of sea for fishing as well as for commercial and artisanal interacting economic, social, cultural and ethno-racial activities (Chadenas et al., 2016; Constant-Pujar, 2011; factors are bound up in the notion of social vulnerability, Dufau, 1990). The latter were grouped together in market and such factors tend to reinforce each other in contexts of towns that long remained active in daytime but were not environmental inequality (Adeola, 2001; Bullard, 1993). commonly places of residence (Sainton, 2015). Coastal environmental inequalities occur when the popu- lations most exposed to natural hazards are also the most socially vulnerable (Mavromatidi et al., 2017). Coastal 1 This legal term was defined in 1681 by the Marine Code under urbanization has dramatically increased around the world, Colbert: ‘‘Shall be considered sea shore and beach all that is covered and thus exposing more and more populations to natural uncovered during the new and full moons, and the point up to which the hazards (IPCC, 2014). Research has further shown that high tide of March extends on the shore’’ (Constant-Pujar, 2011, postcolonial contexts tend to be subject to environmental translated here). C. Claeys et al. / C. R. Geoscience 349 (2017) 351–358 353 The definitive abolition of slavery (Schoelcher decree of 3. Material and methods 27 April 1848) was a historic date in several respects, including for land occupation. Ultimately, a non-negligible The two areas studied here were selected based on share of newly freed slaves had no choice but to remain on their environmental and social characteristics. Both the plantations in exchange for an unattractive work municipalities are subject to comparable types of contract. Others were instead able to settle in towns and hazards. In addition to flooding, mass movements and 4 villages. Some were able to purchase a plot of land to farm volcanism, both are exposed to earthquakes; some of (Buttel, 2007), while others moved onto vacant land, them can cause tsunamis and soil liquefaction (Burac, ravines and coastal areas without right or entitlement– 1999; Mompelat et al., 2011). The rainy season is further including along the ‘‘50 Steps of the King’’ (Brissac, 2011). subject to storms and even hurricanes that result in at The arrival of inhabitants in the 50 Steps zone was times very strong cyclonic swell (D’Erocle, 1995; Desar- tolerated by public authorities at the time and even the, 2014; Pagney-Benito-Espinal et al., 2002) and have a encouraged by plantation owners who, having not marked impact on coastal erosion in some places (BRGM, received all the compensation promised for the loss of 2010). The two areas studied differ, however, in terms of their slaves, were quite unwilling to tolerate the presence their socio-economic makeup, touristic appeal and of newly freed slaves on their plantations if the latter were governance. Indeed, tourism is extremely limited in no longer working. Successive agricultural crises and Capesterre-Belle-Eau and concerns mainly a French subsequent rural exoduses – which culminated in the Antilles-based clientele. Conversely, although Deshaies decline of the sugar industry in the late 20th century – led is quite far from the large and prestigious resort towns of new and extremely poor populations to occupy coastal the archipelago, it nevertheless has a non-negligible areas without right or entitlement (Burner, 2015; Priet, tourism-based economy, with a dozen hotels (there are 1997). Policies to regularize illegal