Autour des conflits à dimension environnementale. Evaluation économique et coordination dans un monde complexe

Standard conditions of usage of public cost-benefit analysis are no longer met to-day in the field of infrastructure projects, for instance for transportation and other networks. When environmental conflicts are at stake, such a tool is no longer supporting both a decision-making process aiming at the general interest of society and decisions accepted by various parts of society. To elaborate assessment methods more appropriate to real conditions of decision-making and have them to bring support to coordination and conflict resolution, the building process and the output should respond to the general requirements of justification on the public arena. Methods should subsequently adapt to the existence of a handful of different justification orders in Western societies. Such orders quite often shock one another about environmental issues. All this urges a significant renewal of theoretical foundations and practices of assessment, with a special mention for revealed preferences theory, and an adaptation of the procedural conditions under which economic expertise is to be implemented, what has been achieved in other fields as food safety.