La guerre du Việt Nam mit la forêt au coeur des enjeux militaires. Nées des controverses sur lesconséquences environnementales des épandages d’herbicides, des hypothèses ont émergé sur les impacts decette pratique : différentiels selon les unités paysagères, aggravés par les perturbations anthropiques antérieureset postérieures à la guerre. Relevant de la biogéographie, l’analyse géohistorique confronte des sources souventdivergentes et privilégie les princeps pour reconstituer, à des dates clés, les paysages d’une province au coeurdu conflit. L’état actuel de partition en trois unités – plaine, collines et montagnes – révèle le lien entreperturbation et accessibilité. Circa 1954, les pratiques précoloniales et coloniales avaient déjà perturbé lesécosystèmes, de manière croissante des montagnes vers la plaine. Les impacts d’une guerre dirigée contre lemilieu furent directs et indirects. Après-guerre, ils furent aggravés par les pratiques civiles, qui bloquèrent lareconquête spontanée et provoquèrent déboisements et déforestations ; la pression s’accrut dans les collines etles montagnes, plus affectées par la guerre. Depuis circa 1990, les décisions politiques ont placé officiellementla forêt entre protection et développement mais elles se heurtent aux nécessités du développement économique.La reconquête, dirigée, accélérée par la plantation d’espèces à croissance rapide, est engagée dans dessylvosystèmes perturbés et épargnés par la guerre. Aujourd’hui, dans les trois unités paysagères, les zonesdéfoliées ne sont pas identifiables : cicatrisation, poursuite du recul des forêts surtout ont fait leur oeuvre.Restent visibles les géofaciès de cratères et les anciennes bases militaires américaines. La conjugaison desperturbations empêche l’identification du strict impact actuel de la guerre et relativise celui-ci ; plus affaiblissont les sylvosystèmes de la plaine qui, moins touchés, subissent une forte pression séculaire. / The Việt Nam war put the forest at the heart of military stakes. The controversies over the environmentalconsequences of herbicide spraying inspire the hypothesis that the impacts of this practice are differentialaccording to landscape units, worsened by the human disturbances prior to and after the war. Coming underbiogeography, the geohistorical analysis compares sources, that are often divergent, and favors primary ones toreconstruct, at key dates, the landscapes of a province at the heart of the conflict. The present state of partitioninto three units – plain, hills and mountains – reveals the link between disturbance and accessibility. Circa1954, the precolonial and colonial practices had already disturbed ecosystems increasingly from the mountainsto the plain. The impacts of a war against the environment were direct and indirect. In the post-war years, theywere worsened by the civilian practices, which inhibited spontaneous reforestation and provoked forestimpoverishment and deforestation; the pressure increased in the hills and mountains, which were more affectedby the war. Since circa 1990, the political decisions have officially put the forest between protection anddevelopment but they come up against the necessities of economic development. Managed, accelerated by theplantation of fast-growing species, the reforestation is started in some sylvosystems, that were disturbed orspared by the war. Today, in the three landscape units, the defoliated areas are not identifiable because ofhealing and, above all, continuation of forest decline. Geofacies of craters and former American military basesremain visible. The combination of disturbances prevents from identifying the strict present impact of the warand puts this one into perspective; more weakened are the plain sylvosystems, which were less hit but suffer astrong secular pressure.

This thesis examines the discourses surrounding the subject of climate change, with particular emphasis on the discourse(s) of the emerging social movement for climate justice. Positioned within the social constructivist and critical research paradigms, the methodology involves a Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis in which discourse is defined as a historically-situated, materially-embodied, and power-imbued set of statements and rules that comprise a unique and coherent representation of the world. A review of the climate change-related literature reveals four primary discourses on the phenomenon of rising greenhouse gas emissions: early scientific, climate modernization, climate change denial, and climate justice. The statements and rules of these four discourses, as well as the theoretical trends and sociopolitical, economic, and ecological factors affecting their historical development are described. A deeper analysis using 26 primary documents representing every major climate justice organization reveals that rather than a single coherent discourse, the climate justice movement encompasses four individual sub-discourses: global, peasant-oriented, Indigenous, and civil rights. Focussed on climate-related inequities in developing countries of the Southern Hemisphere, the global discourse constructs climate change as a problem of the structures and logic of the globalized capitalist economy. The peasant-oriented discourse emphasizes inequities to peasant farmers, and represents climate change as largely the result of industrialized agriculture and food systems. With specific concern for the wellbeing of Indigenous communities, the Indigenous discourse locates the cause of climate change in the “violation of the sacred” and the loss of harmony with Mother Earth. The United States-based civil rights discourse primarily emphasizes the rights and interests of African American communities and constructs climate change as a problem of externalized ecological costs and failure to incent a “green” economy. The relations of power between the four climate justice sub-discourses and the prevailing climate modernization discourse are tentatively explored on the basis of three indicators of strength (internal coherence, material foundations, and adaptive capacity), on which basis several questions related to discursive resistance are proposed as possible avenues of future research. / Thesis (Master, Environmental Studies) -- Queen's University, 2012-10-11 09:45:29.397