Les pratiques de jardinage face aux risques sanitaires et environnementaux des pesticides : les approches différenciées de la France et du Québec

In 2008, the amount of pesticides used by amateur gardeners in the approximately fifteen million private gardens which exist in France and which represent a total area of a million hectares, rose to 3500 tons. Within the framework of a highly growing social awareness regarding health and environment problems and whilst the cut back on the use of pesticides in agriculture represents one of the main political objectives in the field of environmental protection, and Europe defines its chemical substances control policies (REACH), a study on the use of pesticides in gardening practices represents a good observation point to understand representations, dispositions and social practices linked to the use of pesticides in private gardens, to question the announced “greening” of life styles, to appreciate the capacity of the commercial production-distribution chain to manage such problems, and finally to evaluate the impact and direction of public policies to prevent health and environment risks.The results of the thesis are supported by sociological investigations carried out with amateur gardeners, by means of questionnaires (N=900) and interviews (N=24), with producers and distributors of phytosanitary products and with the press specialized in gardening (N=17) in France. The analysis of the pesticides code of management applied since 2003 in Quebec and which constitutes a regulation which prohibits the use and sale of a series of pesticides recognized as the most hazardous health-wise in municipal and private gardens, represents a counterpoint of the French situation.In the case of France, the thesis underlines a sort of composite regulation regarding the sanitary and environmental risks linked to the use of pesticides by amateur gardeners, involving three dimensions. (1) Intimately linked to the marketing mechanisms, this type of regulation attributes the core of the responsibility to the user, considered as the consumer to be blamed, while public authorities consider the firms which produce the pesticides as economic operators whose competitive advantages must be considered, seeking to respect the dynamics of offer and demand as well as controlling this market based on product certification. (2) It adopts the principles of the one-man society where the individual would be the main reference of the dynamics of contemporary societies and the regulator of collective problems based on his consumer choices and his individual position-taking. (3) It is located in a context where the State has lost its central position under the double influence of “Europeanization” and “decentralization” and where the types of political regulations are characterized by less interventionist forms of government, which can be defined as “politics without politics”. The composite regulation of domestic pesticides has an implicit postulate which attributes the responsibility of the risks involved to the users and which , in case of leaving an open door to the potential reduction of the use of products, tends to limit their exclusion as well as the possibilities of a transition towards pesticide free gardening.La thèse met en évidence, dans le cas de la France, une forme de régulation composite des risques sanitaires et environnementaux liés aux usages des pesticides par les jardiniers amateurs, qui comporte trois principales dimensions. (1) Intimement articulée aux mécanismes de marché, cette forme de régulation impute l’essentiel de la responsabilité à l’utilisateur considéré en tant que consommateur à responsabiliser, alors que les autorités publiques considèrent les firmes de pesticides comme des opérateurs économiques dont les avantages compétitifs sont à valoriser, veillant donc à respecter la dynamique de l’offre et de la demande tout en se chargeant d’encadrer ce marché par l’homologation des produits. (2) Elle épouse les principes de la société singulariste où l’individu serait la référence centrale de la dynamique des sociétés contemporaines et le régulateur des problèmes collectifs par ses choix de consommation et ses prises de positions individuelles. (3) Elle s’opère dans un contexte où l’État a per¬du sa centralité sous la double influence de l’européanisation et de la décentralisation et où les modes de régulations politiques sont caractérisés par des formes moins dirigistes de gouvernement pouvant être définies comme des « politiques sans politique ». La régulation composite des pesticides domestiques est porteuse d’un postulat implicite qui impute la responsabilité des risques aux usagers et qui, si elle laisse ouverte la voie à une po¬ten-tielle réduction de l’usage des produits, tend à limiter leur exclusion et réduit les possibilités d’une transition vers un jardinage sans pesticides