ZAD, or « Zones A Defendre » (Area to Defend ), have shown their existence to the world those last 10 years. The first place called this way, was the ZAD of Notre-Dame-Des-Landes, very close from Nantes. This is an entire natural wet area, that was destined to be destroy to build a new big airport.
This project was launched in the 70s and the administrative name of the place for the project was « ZAD : Zone d’Aménagement Différé ». That‘s why in 2008, ZAD activists decided to call the area « ZAD : Zone A Defendre ».
This place has been the place of a lot of social experimentation by organising the collective life and fighting to impede the government to go further in the project and doing so, protect the nature.
For social psychologists, a good question would be to know if militate against the government, sometimes illegally, to protect a land can be a pro-environmental behavior or not. Such a behavior is often defined as follow: «a behavior adopted by an individual who consciously decides to minimize its negative impacts on the natural and built environment”(Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002). People who live or act on a ZAD let us think that there is a genuine will to minimize their negative effects on natural environments and even more important, a will to hinder the destruction of the nature by industrial layout or urbanization.
It seems that ZAD, as contesting method against deterioration of nature, is on top of radical contesting methods and the political actions which emanate from it are likely to match with Stern (2000) categorization of pro-environmental behaviors. For Stern, there are two ways to define a pro-environmental behavior. The first one is by considering the level of consciousness of the performed behavior. In fact it is possible to observe pro-environmental behaviors performed without any conscious intention as well as it is possible to observe an effective intention in the realisation of the behavior (Stern, 2000). Furthermore, among pro-environmental behaviors, some have «direct» consequences (Stern, Young, & Druckman, 1992) and others have «indirect » consequences (Rosa & Dietz, 1998). For example, if we quit using chemicals to clean the house, it is going to have a « direct » benefic consequence on nature but if we vote for a law to protect a natural area, this law is going to be applied later by others, it gives « indirect » consequences (Rosa & Dietz, 1998). Thus, regarding to these different ways to analyse a pro-environmental behavior, with conscious intention or not and with a direct impact or not, Stern (2000) propose four main types of pro-environmental behaviors: activist behavior, non-activist behavior from the public sphere, private behaviors and organisational behaviors.
According to this categorization and regarding to the occupation of lands, to the manifestations made to protect it and to the communications made by people from a ZAD, we can categorized them as environmental activists which is considered as a pro-environmental behavior regarding to Stern’s research. Therefore, it seems to be very interesting to investigate more social movements like ZAD if we want to better understand the link between human beings and nature.
Kollmuss, A., & Agyeman, J. (2002). Mind the Gap: Why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior? Environmental Education Research, 8(3), 239-260. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620220145401
Rosa, E. A., & Dietz, T. (1998). Climate change and society: Speculation, construction and scientific investigation. International Sociology, 13, 421–425.
Stern, P. C. (2000). New Environmental Theories: Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 407-424. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00175
Stern, P. C., Young, O. R., & Druckman, D. (Eds.). (1992). Global environmental change: Understanding the human dimensions. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.