Paper short abstract:

Efforts to reclaim abandoned farmland are multiplying in France. Environmentalists are torn between condemning these as disguised deforestation or supporting the “green” projects developed on cleared land. Drawing on a multispecies ethnography, I explore the trouble caused by unplanned foresting.

Paper long abstract:

Across France, efforts to reclaim abandoned farmland are multiplying. Policies and tools are being developed to identify plots of land that have remained uncultivated, neglected for decades by modernised agriculture. Seen as a way of freeing up land for organic farming or green energy development, reclamation projects often involve the mechanised clearing of large areas. They are based on the argument that the spontaneous vegetation growing on abandoned farmland is “too homogeneous” and that biodiversity would be improved by opening up the environment.

This is a hotly debated issue in conservationist circles, where farmland abandonment is increasingly seen as an opportunity for free forest growth. Environmentalists are torn between condemning clearances as disguised deforestation or supporting the “environmentally virtuous” projects developed on cleared land. They argue over the correct characterisation of the spontaneous regrowth: hybrid forms of “scrub” or “thicket”, reluctantly called true “forest”. Their forest potential is constantly being questioned, putting theories of ecological succession to the test. Echoing naturalists’ discomfort in dealing with “overgrowth”, I explore the political and conceptual issues at stake.

Focusing on the case study of a pioneering scheme to reclaim a significant amount of abandoned land in a coastal village, this paper examines the unplanned “doing” of forests on the margins of agricultural modernisation, and their paradoxical “undoing” by new green politics. Drawing on a multispecies ethnography, I also consider how these processes of foresting affect property regimes, and frame human action on the environment.