Selon le discours trop souvent entendu, la biodiversité est la victime innocente des activités humaines, et sa conservation est indispensable à l'avenir de l'humanité. Mais la réalité est bien plus complexe... Tous les hommes perçoivent-ils la nature de la même manière ? Toute la biodiversité est-elle nécessaire au fonctionnement de la biosphère ? Quelle est son origine ? L'homme n'est-il pas, lui aussi, créateur de biodiversité ? Souhaitons-nous réellement protéger toute la diversité des espèces ? En définitive, quelles natures voulons-nous ? À partir du constat de situations réellement inquiétantes, conséquences de la pauvreté des pays du Sud et de la course au profit des pays du Nord, l'auteur tord le cou à certaines idées reçues. En s'appuyant sur de nombreux exemples, il explore des pistes pour un avenir dans lequel l'homme a toute sa place au sein de la nature.

This book provides an interdisciplinary overview of the role of gardens in cities throughout different historical periods. It shows that, thanks to various forms of spatial and social organisation, gardens are part of the material urban landscape, biodiversity, symbolic and social shape, and assets of our cities, and are increasingly becoming valued as an ‘order’ to follow. Gardens have long been part of the development of cities, serving different purposes through the ages: shaping neighborhoods to promote health or hygiene, introducing aesthetic or biological elements, gathering the citizens around a social purpose, and providing food and diversity in times of crisis. Highlighting examples that can serve as the basis for comparisons, the chapters offer a brief panorama of experiences and models of gardens in the city – in the European context and in various periods of history – while also discussing issues related to garden cities, urban agriculture and community gardens. The contributors are university staff from various disciplines in the human and life sciences, in discourse with other academics but also with practitioners who are interested in experiences with urban gardens and in promoting an awareness of their spatial, social and ‘philosophical’ goals throughout history. The book will appeal to urban geographers, sociologists and historians, but also to urban ecologists dealing with ecosystem services, biodiversity and sustainable development in cities. From a more operational standpoint, landscape planners and architects are sure to find many of the projects enlightening and inspirational.

Ordinary areas are a home to biodiversity and provide ecosystem services. Moreover, they are an important part of the experience on which individuals anchor their appreciation and being in the world. Urbanization deeply modifies individuals’ everyday relations with their environment. The relationship to these human-shaped areas leads to suggest the hypothesis of a growing disconnect between people and nature. This thesis studies the attention to biodiversity in the daily lives of individuals. Attention is structured around cognitive, emotional and behavioral elements. How the experience of biodiversity in an everyday-life context influences individuals’ knowledge, attitudes and practices towards biodiversity and conservation. A first quantitative work revealed a link between individuals' knowledge on biodiversity and the implementation of practices favorable to biodiversity. We have shown the importance of embodied knowledge in daily reality. We have shown that contact with nature on a daily basis can encourage both knowledge and practices to biodiversity. The study of the impact - both in the short and medium term – of a single individual experience (days of events in public parks in Paris) revealed a gap between the increased interest in biodiversity and its inclusion in future individual practices. The study of the consequences – in the medium and long term – of a repeated individual experience to biodiversity (participation in a citizen science program) showed an evolution of knowledge and practices favorable to biodiversity. Our results show that individuals’ attention to biodiversity is encouraged under three conditions: implementation/participation in a local context, direct interaction and knowledge transfer. The context of everyday life appears as an interesting framework since it enables the integration of the observation experience in the complexity of individual approaches (cognitive, affective) and the introduction of biodiversity as an element of ordinary lives of individuals.

This edited collection outlines the accomplishments, shortcomings, and future policy prospects of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, arguing that the Convention is not broad enough to confront the challenges concerning human rights, sustainability, and cultural diversity as a whole.