Marie Saydeh au colloque ESAC 2025

Marie Saydeh (membre étudiante, doctorat en sciences géographiques), sous la direction de Jean-François Bissonnette (membre régulier, département de géographie) et la codirection de Jérôme Dupras, a participé au colloque annuel de l’ESAC (Environmental Studies Association of Canada) qui s’est tenu du 1er au 3 juin 2025 à Toronto. Marie y a présenté la communication intitulée : « Interpretation of social representations of biodiversity amongst stakeholders involved in Quebec’s agri-environmental management ». La participation de Marie a été soutenue par une Bourse de rayonnement du CRAD, qui finance la participation des étudiantes et étudiants membres à des événements permettant de faire rayonner leurs travaux. Félicitations Marie !

Marie Saydeh au colloque annuel de l’ESAC, 2025. Crédits: Christine Beaudoin, 2024.

Résumé de la communication :

In Quebec, several policies aim to manage biodiversity in agricultural areas. In addition, following COP-15, authorities have communicated their commitment to meet conservation targets by 2030, which complexifies agricultural land management. To meet such goals, several agri-environmental stakeholders, from federal to local scales, are called to work together. Amongst challenges, one is to communicate and grasp each other’s roles and visions for biodiversity management in agricultural lands. Our research interprets and typologizes social representations of biodiversity of these stakeholders, to eventually delineate governance networks. Through our qualitative approach, we conducted individual semi-structured interviews, surveys and conceptual mapping with 70 strategically selected stakeholders. By triangulating results from our discourse and content analyses, we put forward a conceptual framework to deconstruct and analyze social representations of biodiversity. We also develop a typology of social representations identified with our participants. Using our framework, we take notice of misconceptions stakeholders have of others’ representations of biodiversity. Not only there’s a contrast of conception between people that operate in agriculture and in environmental management, but stakeholders sometimes misunderstand the knowledge someone with different expertise have of biodiversity. These misconceptions revolve around understanding others’ accountability and agency in biodiversity management networks.