Jean-Philippe Gautrais: “My book is a new manifesto of municipal communism”

In his book “Fontenay-sous-Bois, territory of popular ecology”, the mayor of the commune of Val-de-Marne Jean-Philippe Gautrais defends an environmental and social political project that he says he can carry out on a local scale. . If the levers exist at the municipal level, he nevertheless pleads for national changes, without which territorial planning remains designed for capitalism.

When it comes to ecology and the fight against global warming, we tend to imagine state or even global responses. You do it at the municipal level. What does this mean?

When you are mayor, you are constantly involved in day-to-day management. It seemed important to me to take a step back and remind ourselves that thinking globally is above all acting local. To participate in the fight against global warming, I am talking about a certain number of actions at the local level, but which can be systematized at the national level.

To respond to the ecological emergency, while responding to the social emergency, we must implement policies that break with capitalism. I don't think there is a moralistic answer. In view of the political situation, it is urgent to share wealth to respond to environmental and social challenges.

How do you translate it concretely in Fontenay-sous-Bois?

I will take the example of the energy question. Our town has a heating network. It heats half the city and provides it with hot water. With the explosion in gas and electricity prices, we decided to accelerate heat production by investing in geothermal energy.

Apart from the initial investment to fetch hot water deep in the ground, this energy is free. And it's 99% clean. We limit our ecological footprint by producing low-cost energy.