Sciences environnementales et interdisciplinarité: Une réflexion partant des débats aux Pays-Bas

Abstract

Right from their start in the early 1970s to the present day, the concept of interdisciplinarity played a major role in the development of environmental sciences, while taking their part in the search for sustainable development. Though interdisciplinarity therefore seems to be a self-evident characteristic and advantage of environmental sciences, its actual implementation, both in research and education, encounters intellectual and organisational difficulties. The first section of this paper highlights the debate on the interdisciplinarity issue. While focusing on the arguments brought forward in three more or less consecutive stages of the history of environmental sciences in The Netherlands, the article sums up arguments and debates that have been held on a much wider scale. The contemporary debate on interdisciplinarity, by the way, is particularly affected by the concept of sustainable development. The second section of the article assesses the benefits and the limits of the interdisciplinarity debate thus far, looking for some critical factors for success and failure. The third section examines the way(s) interdisciplinarity, as we conceive it, could be organised, both in research and education. Although interdisciplinarity is looked upon not so much as an intellectual, but rather as an organisational issue here, we assess some attitudinal characteristics to be necessary for its successful implementation. © NSS-Dialogues, EDP Sciences 2004.