| Summary: | Our concrete analysis of the relationships between society and environment in coastal parts of Casamance, Guinea and Guinea Bissau associate two methods to represent a territory and its functioning that link space- and time- dimensions; SPOT's datas and a model with "joined productions" or model of activities. The quantitative model created is nothing else than the systemic approach outcome in the material life field that is closely connected with operational research expressed in very general terms taking space in acount. The analysis's heart is what links men, resources, technics in a changing territory. The term of "material production" does express this linkage, this interface. On the one hand, our researches are dealing with the processes by which humans make use of different forms of raw materials and goods available on their territory at the current of a given time, and on the other hand they are dealing with the result of these processes. So, we have defined a specific semantic and used a linear algebric system, which materializes the connection rules of the processes, that is to say the phenomena of interconnected production and consumption, to build a formal and quantitative representation better adapted than natural language to a systemic and global description of societies' material reproduction. Such formalizations orientate the way of collecting datas, especially in environments where statistics absence is generalised, they stimulate the functioning of a productive system , allow "to draw up the balance sheet" and to apprehend interactions, constraints, limiting factors existing at different levels of the material life functioning and allow to imagine the possible responses to cope with the changes (demographic growth, technical intensification, exodus). It is a contribution to the development "durability" on the lines as the models elaborated by Georgescu Roegen.That kind of quantitative method of analysis of a multifactual universe bound by changes can be in use to help with decisions; but it must be associated with others methods depending on anthropology to explain games and prospects from different actors beyond the material goods uses.
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