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René Dumont (13 March 1904 – 18 June 2001) was a French engineer inagronomy, asociologist, and an environmentalpolitician.
Dumont was born inCambrai,Nord, in the north of France. His father was a professor inagriculture and his grandfather was a farmer. He graduated from theINA P-G, as an engineer inagronomy. First sent toVietnam (1929) at the end of his studies, he was disgusted bycolonialism and returned toParis to spend most of his career as a professor of agricultural sciences (1933–74).
René Dumont started his career as a promoter of the use of chemical fertilizers and mechanisation. He wrote articles inLa Terre Française (Pétainist weekly journal), favoring agricultural corporatism. However, he was one of the first to denounce damages from theGreen Revolution ("Révolution Verte") and to fight agricultural productivism. He was an expert with theUnited Nations andFAO, and wrote about 30 books. He traveled widely and had a good understanding of farming issues in underdeveloped countries.
He advocated:
He considered development not to be so much a question of money,fertilizer, or seeds, but a careful balance of the three. He advocated relations between humans and their fields that relied foremost on relations between humans themselves, social relationships being the basis for proper agricultural and industrial development. Finally, he believed the basis for good social relationships between humans was good relationships between men and women, thus arguing demographic control relied on female emancipation.
Ahead of his time, the most famous French agronomist, well known for his red-pullover, surprised French people by showing on TV anapple and a glass of water, telling them how precious these natural resources were, and predicting the future price ofoil.[citation needed] Dumont was one of the first to explain the consequences of what was to be calledglobalization,demographic explosion, productivism,pollution, shantytowns, malnutrition, rift between northern and southern countries. He was also one of the first to use the term "développement durable" (sustainable development).
He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting aworld constitution.[1][2] As a result, for the first time in human history, aWorld Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt aConstitution for the Federation of Earth.[3]
He ran forPresident in 1974 as the first ecologist candidate, and won 1.32% of the votes. His campaign director wasBrice Lalonde. That election opened the way topolitical ecology. The French political ecology was founded by Dumont and is under-developed countries oriented, against war, againstcapitalism and for solidarity. Some consider it not sufficiently rooted indeep ecology.
Dumont is considered to be the forefather of theFrench Green Party. In a statement, France's Green Party called Dumont "the man who made it possible to bring environmental policies in a direct and natural manner into the political world".
He wrote a best-selling book,L’Afrique noire est mal partie (1962).
Dumont was a founding member ofATTAC.[4]
He died in 2001 inFontenay-sous-Bois.
