An article by E. Dufour that aims to reopen the future of both urban sanitation and agriculture
According to the Stockholm Resilience Centre, cycles of biogenic elements (nitrogen, phosphorus) are massively disrupted. This disruption manifests the ‘metabolic rift’ between industrial society and its environment. Using a geohistorical approach, this paper explores French evicted socio-technical trajectories that can be considered as past ‘biogeochemical policies’ i.e., policies which can respond to this disruption of natural cycles: municipal composting, sewage farms, fish ponds, the use as fertiliser of urine and faecal matter. By outlining the factors of their disappearance, which constitute locks that have now to be overcome, it aims to reopen the future of both urban sanitation and agriculture.
A barge of the Société d’Assainissement de la Région Parisienne (SARP) loaded with night-soil travelling up the Seine towards Saint-Denis at the Bougival lock, Seine-et-Oise, in the 1950s (photograph by Charles Fiquet, ca 1952).
Source: Musée de la batellerie et des voies navigables de Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
