00000_abstract_IRD55_v6
29/07/10
10:45
Page 1
Le journal
j
de l'IRD
n° 55 June-July-August 2010
Translator: Nicholas Flay
p. 1 Interview
p. 1 News
p. 5 Partners
Dual malnutrition confronting Africa
Excerpt from an interview with Bernard
Pelletier, director of the Grand
Observatoire de l’environnement et
de la biodiversité dans le Pacific sud
✆ M. Cupillard
A new president
for the IRD
✆ IRD/J. Lemoalle
Patagonian glaciers in peril
T
he great majority of glaciers in
Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego
are receding. Scientists’ estimates of
the extent of the regression of these
enormous inaccessible ice formations
indicate that some have diminished by
40% in 60 years.
✆ IRD/P. Wagnon
p. 7-8-9 Research
Special feature: New religious movements
Excerpt from an interview with Jean-Pierre Dozon, IRD anthropologist
✆ IRD/M. Pilon
p. 3 News
Mosquitoes
prefer beer drinkers
B
✆ IRD/S. Fancello
eer lovers attract more mosquitoes than water drinkers!
This finding concerns traditionally made millet beer
(dolo). It was revealed by a recent publication by the IRD, the
Bobo-Dioulasso Muraz Centre and the Institut de recherche en
sciences de la santé (Burkina Faso). The study forms part of
research on malaria transmission.
p. 3 News
Second wind for soil mapping
I
s now possible to know the stocks of carbon contained in the soil, parcel by parcel for a whole country!
Like much other pedological data, the information has
recently become available for the whole of Laos. A
2nd generation mapping method, which combines field surveys, geostatistical techniques
and easily accessible accurately located topographical and environmental data, has recently
been developed by IRD researchers.
p. 4 Partners
p. 12 Earth
Better water management
for Sahelian agriculture
Employment and the
informal sector in the South
I
T
mprovement in productivity of water in
Sub-Saharan Africa is an essential factor
for ensuring food security and combating
poverty in rural areas. Water productivity
corresponds to the quantity of cereals, meat
from reared livestock, or rice, produced with
one cubic metre of the precious liquid. There
is ten times less water in the Sahel than in
the Beauce, France’s granary in the centre of the country . These issues are at the core
of the “Water and Food Challenge program”, devised by the Consultative Group for
International Agriculture Research (CGIAR), aiming to improve water management at
the scale of the major drainage basins and reinforce the availability and access to food.
To define the main research questions to deal with and find specific responses, “Basin
Focal Projects” have been set up upstream of the programme. The Basin Focal Projects
“Niger Basin” and “Volta Basin”, run by IRD hydrologists, recently delivered their final
reports.
p. 11 Valorization
Plants to the rescue of polluted soils
T
SAS: To what extent is GOPS going to contribute to the development of island
countries in the Pacific region?
B.P.: Through advancing knowledge and tools for observation of phenomena over the
long term, like global warming, water acidification and their impacts on populations.
Through better knowledge of the biodiversity and its valorization at Pacific region level.
The GOPS deals with questions at global scale. For example, the agency is the coordinator of replies to the call for proposals from the Grand Emprunt for facilities of excellence, submittals for which must be sent by September 2010. In New-Caledonia, this
loan is envisaged to equip the scientific teams with vessels and facilities for coastal and
lagoon waters for example.
p. 2 News
✆ IRD/B. Moizo
On 9 June, Michel Laurent, the Institute Director-General since June
2006, was appointed Chairman of
the IRD by the Cabinet of Ministers,
following a proposal by the Minister
of Higher Education and Research.
Another development for the IRD
came with the decree of 3 June 2010
establishing the AIRD as and agency
within the Institute. This agency’s
purpose is : “To mobilize the research
and higher education establishments
and other institutions concerned on
any development-related scientific
question and lead deliberations on
these subjects; to programme and
contribute to the financing of scientific activities in the interests of development; open up the network of the
Institute’s establishments to other
active players in French, European or
other international research, ensuring the consistency with the existing
French facilities abroad.” Apart from
these statutory adjustments, the new
decree confirms the Institute’s role as
operator. It thus affirms the IRD in its
primary mission, enabling it to continue to develop research of excellence. These decisions will pave the way
for finalizing the Institute’s next
major step: elaboration of the Contract of Objectives 2010-2013. That
will be founded on the strategic
study conducted over recent months,
with the participation of the Scientific Committee and the Strategic
Planning Committee.
Sciences au Sud: Why was GOPS set up?
Bernard Pelletier: To gain better overview of the
research activities in the South Pacific. It is a question of
pooling resources, following demands expressed at the
meeting Assises on French research in the Pacific.
he metallurgy industry exerts significant effects on soils, with emissions of heavy
metals which have proven toxicity for humans and ecosystems. Aiming to find remedies for such pollution, researchers are selecting plant and microbial organisms which can
extract these metals from the soil and accumulate them. These decontamination processes are applicable for the countries of the South as well as for the industrialized ones of
the North. They also present researchers with questions on the way in which these accumulation mechanisms work. Several patents have recently valorized these studies.
he informal sector provides most of
the employment in the developing
countries. Knowledge about this type of
activity is therefore essential for understanding how these economies operate
and to fight against the persistent
poverty there. However, it is a difficult
task, because there is naturally little official, reliable data on the subject. The
international conference held in May
2010 in Hanoi, came up in a rather special context, since the current world crisis
seems to be reinforcing further the
weight of the informal sector, destroying
jobs in the other domains of the economy. More than 300 researchers, statisticians and decision-makers from the
world over gathered together – a sign of
the start of a
South-South
cooperation
effort – and the
event produced
scientific results
and even led to
some concrete
policies.
Sciences au Sud: What is the religious landscape like in the South now at the
beginning of the XXIIst Century?
Jean-Pierre Dozon: The countries of the South today are particularly distinctive owing
to their tremendous range of spiritual possibilities. There is a mix of successive layers of
religions, presenting the most diversified landscape of faiths, in Latin America, Africa and
in the Pacific and so on. We find ancient, or even
very ancient, forms of worship, to which is often
added the Catholic church, which arrived with colonization several centuries ago, and lslam, now established for even longer. Juxtaposed to these, more
recently, in the late XIXth and early XXth Centuries,
syncretic religious phenomena: founded by leaders
who invented their proper movements, they borrow
simultaneously from traditional ancestral religions,
revealed religions and the techniques of Catholic
and Protestant missionaries. Each developing their
singular liturgy, they have grown immensely and
constitute institutions in their own right, like the Kimbanguist church of Congo Kinshasa
or the Harrist church of the Ivory Coast. Islam too is experiencing that kind of dynamic,
with the coming of the Brothers and alternative ways. Finally, the past 20 or so years have
seen a new religious wave of spectacular proportions in its amplitude, mainly involving of
evangelist churches and Muslim preachers, increasing rather the abundant range of
spiritual possibilities already on offer in the countries of the South.
SAS: Can we talk in terms of a drive for conquest oby the religions in the South?
JP-Dozon: Undoubtedly, and, both from the chronological and the political points of view,
that corresponds to the free-market wave which followed the end of the Cold War. The
weakening of States it brought opened broad avenues for religious entrepreneurs. As the
effective means of public policies had considerably diminished, whole sections of their past
action -education, heath, social cohesion, especially infrastructure– were deserted: The new
religious players, Muslim preachers or evangelist ministers, swept into the resulting vacuum.
The greta flexibility of their movements –which make a mockery of boundaries, change and
proliferate with a certain autonomy in relation to their original institutions and tolerate
material prosperity, makes them particularly well adapted to the free-market tendency.
Added to this conquest of the public space are ambitions to control masses: the religious
leaders try to gain the allegiance of whole groups, including ethnic groups, disinherited
young people and migrants. To do that, they do not hesitate to engage in borrowing from
the most exotic sources: a Mouride marabout in Dakar organizes group marriages, following the model of the Korean Moon church! For the more enterprising of them, it involves
an explicit conquest for political power, and the competition between movements is fierce
– and sometimes even conflictual –, because the target population cannot be extended infinitely. Furthermore, the ancestral pagan cults tend to resist this strong advance, often by
positioning themselves as an identity-related emblem and adapting what they offer to the
Western public.
© IRD/M. Razafindrakoto
✆ E. Franceschi
M
ore meat, fat, salt and sweetened foods, quick snack meals, often eaten
outside the home: some deep changes in food habits come along with
urbanization. A “food transition”, already installed in the industrialized countries of the North is, in its turn,
exerying an impact on developing countries. The urban
population in Africa has multiplied more than tenfold since
1950. The continent now has to
confront a dual burden. A large
proportion of its population is
still in the grip of hunger, yet
obesity and its serious consequences for health are advancing on the towns and cities.
Two districts of Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, illustrate this unfortunate
trend: 36% of women and 14.5% of men there are overweight.
✆ DR
Abstracts for the international issue
SAS: Has globalization any impact on the religious options on offer?
JP-Dozon: The strong movements currently at work operate in international networks,
whether on the evangelist or Muslim sides. They go forth into the world like large
companies, also adopting some of their strategies, by delocating for example towards
countries where the opportunity for gaining conversions is judged the most favourable.
The churches thus increasingly come along with the installation of the large enterprises
of their country of origin abroad. The lines of circulation of religious movements have
themselves changed: they are no longer mostly polarized from North to South, but follow
a South-South or even South-North orientation. Venezuelan, Brazilian or Nigerian ministers, trained in their country by the American “mega-churches”, set off in their turn to
found churches in Africa, the Pacific or Europe. The same applies to the Muslim preachers. These new movements are closely associated the ongoing globalization: they
follow the movements of men and capital. Emigration provides them with an excellent
vehicle, enabling them to set up everywhere where their many faithful are going to settle. The Senegalese Mourides, for example, are well established in New York, where,
thanks to their diaspora, they have a mosque and solid economic interests.
Consult the articles in full on the IRD Internet site: http://www.ird.fr