Exploring the premise that environmental injustices date back centuries, this article provides an overview of the long trajectory of degradation narratives on Réunion, from the earliest colonial concerns in the late seventeenth century to the contemporary National Park. Through a historical political ecology approach, we identify distinct phases where degradation narratives became prominent, and sometimes entered into conflict, in the environmental history of this French overseas territory, which was a French colony until 1946. Although degradation narratives have shifted significantly over time, they have also gradually converged to a condemnation of the uplands' inhabitants. So far, this move has reproduced socio-spatial inequalities between the uplands region, dedicated to environmental policies, and the lowlands region, dedicated to a plantation economy. Such an account suggests that environmental inequalities may be constituted through a process of continuous change that involves negotiations and often conflicts among multiple dominant stakeholders. Thus, contemporary conservation regimes should not only improve their governance mode, but need to start by doing justice to conservation’ history, especially dynamics of misrecognition with colonial roots.

本文探讨了环境不公正可以追溯到几个世纪前的前提，概述了留尼旺退化叙事的漫长轨迹，从 17 世纪末最早的殖民关注到当代国家公园。通过历史政治生态学方法，我们确定了退化叙事在这个法国海外领土的环境历史中变得突出，有时甚至发生冲突的不同阶段，该领土在 1946 年之前一直是法国殖民地。尽管退化叙事随着时间的推移发生了重大变化，他们也逐渐汇聚成对高地居民的谴责。到目前为止，这一举措再现了致力于环境政策的高地地区与低地地区之间的社会空间不平等，致力于种植园经济。这样的解释表明，环境不平等可能是通过一个持续变化的过程构成的，这个过程涉及多个主要利益相关者之间的谈判和经常冲突。因此，当代保护制度不仅应改进其治理模式，还需要从公正对待保护历史开始，尤其是对具有殖民根源的错误认识的动态。